Sticking to a simple palette with just a few colors can make a bright and bold holiday statement that is attractive and appealing to everyone. And by using slightly unexpected colors you can boost the drama in your home even more.
Selecting the perfect color for your home may be as simple as picking your favorite. This year I’m very into turquoise and I’ve always loved the way blue and silver decorations look. So that would be the logical choice for me. In fact, I think it would look pretty good in my house, but I have a turquoise couch and lime green walls and I sort of think the choice of blues might be too monochromatic so I chose fuchsia instead.
Which brings me to another way to select your colors, go for something that contrasts with your home. Using the same hues you have in your home can be very elegant and give you a beautiful, unifying theme. But choosing something that contrasts can be brilliant and bold and sometimes that’s what Christmas decorating is all about. I personally love the glitz and glamour and sometimes the outright tackiness of all those sparkly lights.
Another way to choose a color scheme is a little more practical. Base it on your pre-existing stash. Are there favorite family ornaments you just cant bear leaving in storage? Well, then they become the basis for your color palette. Or do you have a large collection of red ornaments? If so, haul out those red ones and leave the others in the box. Freshen the entire arrangement by picking up some inexpensive glass balls and fresh colored tinsel or other ornaments to spice up the display.
I’ll let you in on a little Christmas tree decorating secret of mine, instead of garland or tinsel, I use yarn. There are so many wonderful synthetic yarns out there, chock full of their own tinsel, glitter, soft fuzzy feathers and even crystals and jewels. Use a couple different types of yarn in your colors and string them around, as you would garland. Then cut off little pieces and tie bows everywhere. This year I’ve even knit pot cozies. I like to get a small live potted tree and to add some life to the plastic pot I knit a little sleeve, or a pot cozy, out of two kinds of silver yarn and pulled it up over the pot.
Now that you’ve picked your color scheme and added some new and maybe some unexpected decorations you need to carry that theme through your other decorated rooms. You don’t have to decorate the entire house in the same scheme but if you choose to it’s a good idea to vary it a little bit. If you’re going with my fuchsia and silver theme you may want to use more fuchsia to contrast with the lime green walls in the living room. But when you bring the colors into my dining/kitchen combo area the walls are a deep periwinkle blue, in this room the silver is a better color. It brightens up the darker walls. But the fuchsia is still pretty and I carried the color into this room, just not as much of it. Try doing this in your home. Vary the intensity of the color or the hue that you accent.
If you do choose to do other colors throughout the house its best to have some unifying theme. Select colors that look good together and use silver or white or gold or some other “holiday neutral” color to tie everything together and express your festive side.
