Christmas is the time of year where you get the change to turn your home into a festive, joyous space filled with towering trees, glittering globes, and thousands of other delightful decorations. A well-decorated home makes holiday gatherings even more magical, and adds a touch of wonder and excitement to everyone’s favorite time of the year.
Choose a Theme
Having a theme can take your imagination to new heights, not only making your home more charming, but also making the year’s celebrations more memorable. Whether it’s birds, flora and fauna, Santas, or even Hello Kitty, having a theme that suits your taste will make your search for the right decorations easier, exciting, and more interesting.
Decide on a Color Palette
Begin with a color palette of your choosing. Look at your existing décor and figure out your base color. Keeping it neutral—white, gray, black, or even beige—will give your design better flexibility. The best thing about this is that you won’t have to spend much on new ornaments when you decide to change your Christmas theme next year.
Think Outside the Box
You won’t always need to use the usual Christmas ornaments such as balls, angels, ribbons, and poinsettias to adorn your trees and wreaths. You can opt to use whatever you want, or combine them with more traditional pieces. You can use anything from twigs, flowers, stuffed animals, candelabras, lanterns, and even picture frames!
Use whatever catches your fancy and appeals to you. Get creative with texture, balance, patterns, symmetry, proportion, and color distribution. Choose ornaments with different textures; combine rough, fuzzy, matte, and glossy finishes for added interest. You can even create your own ornaments based on your color scheme. For example, you can wrap empty boxes with nicely-colored gift wrappers and hang them on your tree.
Give Your Tree Special Attention
Nothing says Christmas quite like a lovely Christmas tree. You’d want your tree to look beautiful throughout the day, with or without Christmas lights. While there are those who prefer to use the minimalist approach, there is absolutely nothing wrong with going all out! To make filling up an entire tree easier, use ornaments of varying sizes. Don’t be afraid to go big! The bigger your tree, the harder it will be to fill, so huge Christmas balls, flat leaves, large gift boxes, and other sizeable decorations will help in making your tree look more complete.
Elevate your tree to allow for enough space to put gifts under it without ruining the design. You may use anything to lift the tree about a foot off the ground, but ensure that it is stable. Cover the base and platform with a dark-colored cloth. Crushed velvet in deep red is a popular choice for green trees, but other fancy colors like periwinkle, mauve, and peach can do the trick as well.
Be Consistent
Your Christmas decorations should be present throughout your home. Your chosen theme and color scheme should be evident in your tree, in garlands and wreaths, centerpieces, and even your table settings when you entertain. When shopping for your decorations, buy extra pieces for this purpose.
Lighting Is Essential
The soft glow and flicker of Christmas lights complete the yuletide vibe, but it is imperative to uphold safety. First, check that the Christmas lights you purchase are certified tested and safe. Better yet, test them yourself by inspecting each bulb for dullness or breakage. Many fires during the holidays are due to faulty Christmas lights. Try placing them inside the tree to get the glow behind your ornaments.
