Entertaining + Holiday
Easy Holiday Decorating
Looking for some non–cliché ways to make your home feel festive for the holidays? Here are favorite ideas from our stylists to put a modern spin on your holiday decor.
1. Add Touches Of Cheer All Through The House
Why limit all the fun to the living room? Hang garlands or ornaments from kitchen shelves or bookshelves. Set up a mini tree or a simple grouping of paper or metallic trees on your kitchen table, counter or dining room buffet.
In the bedroom, hang a wreath—fragrant or faux—or drape a garland above your bed or bureau. Add sparkling Christmas lights to garlands or use them to outline windows. Balsam-scented candles will add romantic, seasonal ambience.
2. Make A Grand Entrance
For a party or holiday dinner, wow guests when they walk in with lots of candlelight or strings of special LED lights going up the stairs. Line your front steps or walk with hurricanes or flameless candles.
3. Use Ornaments In Unexpected Ways
Add fun favorites to a wreath or garlands, nestle them among greens on your mantel, or hang them from your banister or a chandelier. Mass shimmering balls in a big bowl or in glass hurricanes surrounding pillar candles.
4. You Can't Go Wrong With Candlelight
Create a landscape of light using mercury glass or metallic candleholders down the center of a dining table or on your mantel. Mix sizes + shapes but stick to the same material, such as metal or glass.
5. Style With Sparkle
Use Christmas tree lights, LED lights or lighted branches. Place lighted branches in a big clear glass vase, nestle strings of battery–operated LED fairy lights inside a clear glass hurricane, mass lights inside an empty fireplace, or drape them around a mirror, where their glow will be multiplied.
6. Create A "Wow" Tree
Stick to one color scheme, with ornaments that are mostly silver, gold, white or natural materials. Of course, a tree filled with personal ornaments is meaningful too, but editing your tree will have the most visual impact.
7. For The Minimalist
Or apartment dweller: Instead of a (messy) full–size Christmas tree, use a real or faux mini tree, or just decorate a large branch with ornaments. Hang metallic balls on your wall in the shape of a tree and outline with lights for an extra flourish. Or what could be simpler than a pre–lit wreath or tree?