Best Wreath Hangers

For most front doors, buy an over-the-door wreath hanger, and the Haute Decor adjustable is the one to get: it publishes 20 lb, fits doors up to 1.8 in, and is the only hanger we found that states the clearance its strap needs above the door -- 0.11 in, about two dimes. If your door is steel or a single-pane storm door, use magnets instead and nothing goes over the top at all.

The question people actually ask -- how do I hang a wreath without putting a nail in a door I do not own -- has three answers, and they are not interchangeable.

How we judged these

A wreath is a light object hung in the worst possible place: on the one door in the house that gets slammed, left open in the wind, and expected to latch properly every night. So we ranked on fit before load.

First, the strap thickness. An over-door hanger puts metal between the door and the frame. Published figures here run from 0.04 to 0.11 in -- nearly a threefold spread -- and that is the number that decides whether your door still shuts and locks.

Second, the door thickness it names. Every over-door hanger here publishes a maximum, which is more than can be said for the over-door mirror category.

Third, the published load. It matters least, because almost nothing beats these figures. A large decorated artificial wreath is a few pounds; a fresh evergreen one soaked after rain is heavier but still in single figures. Twenty pounds is not a constraint.

Fourth, what it leaves. Nothing here bonds to the door except the adhesive option, which is the only one with a removal procedure to follow.

The strap thickness is the whole decision

A modern exterior door is fitted with a few millimeters of clearance at the top, and weather seals take up some of that. Slide 0.11 in of steel into that gap and one of three things happens: the door closes normally, the door closes but rubs, or the door stops latching.

The published figures are far enough apart to choose by:

Magnetic: brilliant on the right door, useless on the wrong one

A magnetic hanger is the cleanest answer in existence. Nothing goes over the door, so the door closes exactly as it did; nothing bonds, so there is nothing to remove; and it slides off sideways in January.

It also does not work on most front doors, and the better of the two products here says so itself. Haute Decor states plainly that Attract will not work on thick or double-pane glass, or on non-magnetic surfaces including wood and aluminum -- which rules out the most common front door material in American housing.

The test is a fridge magnet. If it sticks to the door face, you have a steel door. If it does not, you have wood, fiberglass or aluminum, and no magnetic hanger will hold whatever its listing claims. This is the same pull-versus-hold distinction the magnetic hooks page covers in detail: a magnet rated for pull force straight off a surface holds far less hanging down the face of it.

The storm-door case is the interesting one. Attract is sold as a pair precisely so one magnet goes on each side of a single pane of glass, clamping through it. Published that way it holds 2 to 7 lb depending on the glass thickness, which is enough for a light wreath and not enough for a big decorated one.

Adhesive: the fallback, with conditions

If the door takes no strap and no magnet, the remaining answer is an outdoor-rated adhesive hook. The ceiling is lower -- 5 lb is the top of the range we cover in best outdoor adhesive hooks -- and the conditions are real. Outdoor Command strips have a published application temperature range, and a door that has been repainted recently needs the full cure time before anything sticks to it.

The practical note from that page applies doubly here: put the hook up in October, not on the first cold morning in December. Adhesive applied below its stated temperature range is the single most common cause of a wreath on the doorstep.

Adjustable or fixed

Fixed hangers are a drop of 12 to 15 in. Adjustable ones extend to 25 in. The difference matters more than it sounds, because a wreath centered on a 36 in wide door looks wrong if it sits too high, and a door with a glazed panel or a letter plate has places the wreath cannot go.

The rule of thumb that holds up: the wreath wants to sit roughly in the middle of the solid upper panel of the door, with the hanger hidden behind it. Measure from the top of the door to where you want the top of the wreath, then subtract the wreath's own hanging loop. A fixed 12 in hanger puts a 20 in wreath across the upper-middle of a standard door, which is why that length is the most common one sold.

What we would skip

A magnetic hanger on an unverified door. Test with a fridge magnet first. The failure mode is not a weak hold, it is no hold at all.

The thickest strap on the tightest door. If two dimes do not fit in the gap, the 0.11 in hanger will stop the door latching, and a front door that does not latch is a security problem rather than a decorating one.

Adhesive in December. Every outdoor adhesive product we cover publishes an application temperature range and December is usually outside it.

Anything hung on a storm door that slams. A storm door closer snaps the door shut hard, and a wreath on the outside of one takes that impact every time somebody comes home. Hang it on the main door behind instead.

The rest of the door

A wreath hanger is the lightest thing anyone hangs on a door, and this site covers what else goes on one: over-the-door hooks and racks rank on published per-hook load, and door thickness and clearance is the measuring job that governs all of them. For everything else that goes on an exterior wall or door without a fixing, outdoor adhesive hooks has the temperature ranges.