Whether you live in a city apartment or a cabin by a lake, your fireplace can be the focal point of your cabin decor. If you've got a stone fireplace chances are you already have a good base for adding some nice cabin decor. If, on the other hand, you rent an apartment and have a more modern brick or tile fireplace, there are many things you can do to bring lakeside cabin charm to your hearth and mantle.
First, if painting is an option, consider choosing a color based on the main item for your mantle decor. For example, one of the nicest decorations for a cabin decor mantle is a decoy. A beautiful decoy often has subtle colors from which you can select a shade of paint in a complimentary color. Another option is to go with rustic colors traditional in lakeside cabin scenery such as straw color, light to medium warm green, warm grey, light brown or rust and even some shades of blue.
Leaning Wall Shelves
Next pick a central lakeside cabin theme such as pheasants, ducks, trout, bass, cattails, pine cones even field dogs make a great cabin theme. It is better to have a few larger uncluttered pieces for your mantle than a lot of small items. Include the area over the fireplace and the hearth as potential decorating areas.
Once you have your color choices, next select a fireplace screen. Select a black screen either plain or preferably a screen with a lakeside design built into the screen. Choose a design as close to your theme as possible.
When you have chosen your fireplace screen, focus on the area over the fireplace. This is the area where you can really present your theme with a handsome rustic framed painting, a tapestry wall hanging, a wall mount decoy such as a pheasant or flying duck or a large mounted fish, even a personalized decorative sign with your cabin theme and with your family name, a beautiful pine cone wreath. Use a rather large piece above the mantle and don't clutter this space with a collection of items. At most, you can flank your large piece with wall sconces or set the main piece to one side and add a vertical swag of cattails and reeds to the right or left of the main piece. A nice choice for your main piece can also be a large mirror with a rustic weathered frame or themed cabin frame.
You can then choose the items for your mantle. If you have a newer gas fireplace with no mantle you might consider adding a fireplace mantle shelf, available in a number of styles. Select a rustic looking shelf. Continue the main theme you are working with. You might want to choose a waterfowl decoy or a wooden carved and painted trout, an antique reel and fish basket, an arrangement with cattails and reeds in a basket or aged tin pail, a decorative birch bark canoe. If you're going for a pine theme you could combine a pine cone wreath above the mantle with some small, whimsical, fake pine trees in staggered heights. One of the nicest choices for any mantle are family photos in beautiful rustic frames. You can choose frames with themes or just rustic weathered wood. Stand back and look at your choices for the mantle. Some selections will need to be centered on the mantle under the wall decor and some will need to be at the ends of the mantle. Move the items around until you achieve a pleasing look.
Any mantle decor needs candlelight. Fill in with either a set of votive candles along the length of the mantle or set a collection of pillar candles with or without candlesticks at one or both ends of the mantle. Generally if you're not using votive candles, you will want your candles to be of varying heights.
Decorate your hearth sparingly. Some choices are a large basket of reeds, a set of oars leaning against the fireplace (secure these if you use them), a rustic black iron wood holder with or without cabin theme profiles piled with white birch logs. Balance this off with your fireplace tools. If you like, you can include a small hearth area rug such as a small braided rug in a complimentary color.
Above all, have fun decorating your beautiful cabin fireplace.