How to get your home ready in time for Christmas
Don’t deny it — you want an Instagrammable home for Christmas — and we do, too. This time of year proves to be the perfect opportunity to show off your perfectly decorated home to all of your followers, and create the ultimate Christmassy feed that will look aesthetically pleasing on your profile at the same time. But for those with a home that’s just not up to scratch this Christmas, we’ve teamed up with Oldrids & Downtown, a provider of bedroom furniture, to give you a guide on how you can change your interior design and make it more magical for the festive season!
The living room
This is arguably the most important room in the home when it comes to Christmas time. In here, you will be propping up your Christmas tree and flooding your sofa with seasonal cushions and throws. But there are some top tips and tricks you need to know to make your home more visually pleasing for the festive season.
Walls
If you decide that you want to pull out all the stops this Christmas and repaint your walls for December, we recommend that you go with a matt colour, such as a sage green or a traditional royal blue, that will make all of your furniture pop out from the walls. However, if you’re not looking to repaint entirely — the rest of your decorating will not suffer, as there is a lot of versatility around Christmas decor.
Once your walls are ready, it’s time to decide what to put on them. You don’t want to make them too cluttered, but you definitely want to have a movie-like backdrop when it comes to taking photographs on the big day. If you want to showcase your picture-perfect family, hang different sized frames across your wall in an inconsistent pattern — if you don’t want to use multiple photographs and only want to shine the spotlight on one family portrait, make sure that it’s a big photograph to reduce the risk of it looking lost on your wall.
A pre-lit wreath with baubles can make your living room look extra special and you can be adventurous with its placement. If you want to make it a focal point, either hang it independently above your fireplace or let it stand on your mantelpiece and lean it against the wall.
Threads
Check curtains are bound to make your living room look like more like a showroom and this is something that you need to achieve if you’re allowing the world of social media users into your living room through images that are likely to start trending! Stick with a subtle colour — nothing too bold, as this could take the attention away from other aspects of the room you’ve decorated for the jolly season.
Everybody loves cushions on the sofa, however, you can either have too little or too much. You need to find a balance and there are many factors that can influence your decision on how many you need. You need to look at the size of the cushions, the number of sofas in your room and their sizes. Make sure that the cushions you purchase have some festive features, such as snowflakes or reindeers. When it comes to colour, we recommend that you try and stay within the colour scheme of your room — match with either your walls or your curtains – and do not match your cushions with the colour of your sofa or this can make your whole room clash!
Christmas tree
Oh, Christmas tree! Oh, Christmas tree! How lovely are your branches? Putting up the Christmas tree is always an event in itself — the family comes together, you eat nice food and you put on festive tunes. When it comes to picking a tree, artificial trees tend to be the easiest. You want to avoid as much mess as possible around this period because if you don’t, everything becomes more challenging and this is something you don’t want to encounter during the holidays.
Whether you go for a green, white or black Christmas tree, there are a few methods you can take to make your tree unlike any other. Once you’ve pieced together your tree and it’s ready to decorate, remember to hang the LED twinkle lights first — spread them out evenly so that your tree can sparkle in all directions.
If you’re looking to make your tree unique, a Christmas tree garland can make the perfect addition. However, deciding on the type can be a challenge — if you want to keep up with Xmas tree trends, you could go with a string-like garland that includes sleigh bells or even pom-poms that look like snowballs. Another trend that is picking up and would make a killer Insta-pic is letters that hang around the tree spelling out a festive phrase such as “Merry Christmas!” or “Ho! Ho! Ho!”.
When it comes to baubles, go big or go home. Use a mixture of gigantic and tiny baubles to make your tree stand out to any visitor. If you’re using a white tree, do not go with silver coloured baubles and instead opt for a bright and bold colour such as reds and golds. Those using a green Christmas tree, you can’t go wrong with silver!
To top things off, place fake parcels under your tree to give your room that ‘Santa’s Grotto’ sensation. If you have little ones, it might be a nice idea to have a children’s train track loop around the tree to make things extra special.
Christmas dinner
The day we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived and whilst opening presents is most important, Christmas dinner is not far behind! From table covers to dinner sets, everything must be perfect. When it comes to the dining room, you need to make sure that everything is in the right position and that your table design is not lacking in creativity. First, position candles at opposite sides of the table and make sure that they’re in a symmetrical position.
Secondly, position your tableware for each person in the right area — don’t make things too tight, people want to stretch freely after stuffing their faces without the fear of nudging someone by accident. It’s important to leave room in the centre of the table for sauces and gravy boats to reduce the amount of running backwards and forwards to the kitchen!
According to psychology experts, those who deck the halls with decorations earlier tend to be happier than those who don’t. Since Christmas is almost here, there’s no reason for you to not start preparing.
