The Mantel That Glowed Without the Worry

For years the mantel in our living room was the one spot in the house that made me nervous. I burned real wax pillars up there every fall and Christmas, and by the end of the season the wood was dotted with little wax drips I had to soften with a hairdryer and scrape with a credit card. Worse, I would light them before dinner and then walk into the kitchen to finish cooking, knowing a flame was still going in the other room. Nothing ever happened. But I did not like it. Two years ago, in September, I bought a set of nine antizer flameless candles, mostly because I wanted the look without the worry.

The set came with nine real wax pillars: two 4 inch, two 5 inch, two 6 inch, one 7 inch, one 8 inch, and one 9 inch, all 2.2 inches across. I put every one of them on the mantel. That sounds like a lot, but our mantel is wide, and the heights let me group them instead of lining them up like soldiers. The short ones sit in front, the tall ones toward the back corners. It took me one afternoon to figure out the arrangement, and I have not changed it much since.

What I noticed first was how ordinary they look in daylight. The bodies are real wax, not that hollow plastic shell you can spot from across the room. The light is warm, not blue or harsh. I am not going to tell you they are indistinguishable from a live flame, because they are not. You can see they are LED if you get close. But from the sofa, with the lamps low, they do what I wanted: they make the mantel feel lit instead of decorated.

The remote lives in the drawer of the side table next to the sofa. Only I use it. Gary has never touched it, and I like that. I can turn all nine on at once before company comes, or turn them off when I go to bed without walking down the row. There is a timer on the remote too, though I rarely use that part. I am a person who likes a switch, and this is close enough. The candles are battery powered and cordless, so there is no cord to hide behind the stockings or tape along the mantel.

I should say what they are not. They are not waterproof, so mine stay inside. They are not going to light a room the way a lamp does. They are accent light, and on a mantel that is enough. The wax does collect a little dust between seasons, same as any wax pillar, and I wipe them with a soft cloth when I bring the fall things up. That is the whole maintenance.

Two falls and two Christmases in, all nine still light, and I have not scraped a wax drip off that mantel since.

The first fall I used them, I tucked three of the small foam pumpkins from the DomeStar set around the candles and scattered the leaves along the mantel. That is still what I do. The five that go on the porch table live in a shallow basket because they are so light, but the three on the mantel just sit. The candles give the leaves a little glow at night, and the whole thing takes ten minutes to put out. Before, I would have been worried about a real flame near dried leaves. With the antizer candles, that worry is gone.

At Christmas the candles stay where they are. I do not pack them away with the fall things because they work just as well with the Christmas decor. The mantel gets the same nine pillars, and the rest of the room gets the tree in the front window. I bought that tree three Novembers ago, and Gary carries it up from the basement. The candles are the one thing on the mantel that never has to move. I turn them on after supper and turn them off before bed.

I have had people ask if I miss the real candles. I do not. The smell of a burning wick is nice, I will give you that. But the wax drips were not nice, and the looking over my shoulder was not nice. The antizer set gave me the warm light without the cleanup. If you want the smell, buy a candle for the dining table and leave the mantel alone. That is what I would do.

The set has been through two falls and two Christmases. All nine still work. Nothing has cracked or quit. The remote still does what it should. I cannot tell you how long the batteries last because I have not kept track. I only know I have not thought about them much, and that suits me. That is the kind of review I want to read: not a laboratory test, just a woman in Ohio telling you what happened in her living room.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Measure your mantel before you buy. Nine pillars take up more room than three, and the tallest is 9 inches, so you want to know where it will sit before it arrives. Start with the set if you are tired of wax drips. Leave the real candles for the dinner table where you can watch them. Keep the remote where you will remember it, because the one small annoyance is standing up to turn them off one by one when the remote is not where you left it. And do not expect them to light the room. They are there to make the mantel look cared for, and they do that. If a neighbor asks me whether they are worth it, I say yes, as long as you want the look of candles and not the smell of them.