The mantel is the focal point in most living rooms, including ours. Our mantel also happens to have a flat-panel TV above it, which is functional and makes sense for when we’re relaxing on the couch but doesn’t do much for me style-wise when it comes to tying it into the rest of our living room decor.

For the few months we’ve lived in our house, the mantel has remained mostly empty, partly because I was still settling into a decorating style for the rest of the living room and partly because I couldn’t figure out what I could put there that wouldn’t block our view of the TV.

But after shopping around some of the décor items in other rooms of the house and getting creative with layering items of different heights and textures, I stumbled upon a stylish solution to fill the blank canvas that was our mantel.

So far, the rest of our living room is taking on a classic yet casual style, so I knew I wanted the mantel to have some symmetry without looking too formal. After browsing mantels on Pinterest, I learned a good rule of thumb when styling a mantel in this way is to group three like, proportionate items on either side and place one larger item in the middle.

To achieve that “classic yet casual” feel for our mantel, I layered items I already had on hand in other rooms around the house: two pillar candle stands of varying heights with a flat decorative glass candle holder on one side and a brown glass bottle, decorative glass goblet filled with coffee beans and a glass hurricane candle holder on the other side.

The larger item in the middle is actually two items—I spray painted some baskets I had on hand to match the other darker items on either side of the mantel and filled them with some natural decorative woven wood balls—but they are grouped together close enough to have the same effect as one larger item.

I also knew I wanted to incorporate candles on the mantel in some way to complete the cozy, natural look I had created but didn’t want to risk a candle catching our electronics on fire, so I opted to use battery-operated LED candles I found at my local hardware store instead. They are wax-based, so still look fairly realistic from our view from the couch, and as an added bonus, the ones we purchased came with a remote control. For extra ambiance, I placed similar LED tealights (also purchased at my local hardware store) around the mantel as well.