We’re really excited here at ufurnish.com to start planning our Christmas interiors. We’ve been looking back over the key trends and events of the last twelve months to put together our top five decorating trends to inspire you this festive season. Whether you’re interested in a handcrafted holiday period or a colourful celebration our top picks are sure to add that festive sparkle to your home.
A handcrafted Christmas
Lockdown inspired a love of making in many of us, and this newfound appreciation of handmade items will feed into our decorating schemes this Christmas. Don’t worry, though, you don’t have to craft a single decoration to achieve this look! There are plenty of ready-made seasonal items available to help you create this homespun vibe. Instead of buying coloured baubles for your tree, choose simple wooden decorations and festive bows. They will look as if they’ve been crafted at home, but a little more polished! Of course, this decorating trend offers children a terrific opportunity to get more involved in the festive build-up by adding their own homemade items into the mix. Pretty fairy lights are a must too – what’s Christmas without them?! Why not choose some of the lovely botanical-shaped options – leaves, berries, acorns – available to add a nice point of difference to your room? Extending this trend to your tablescape is as easy as buying Christmas crackers made from brown paper and finished with ribbon rather than the classic metallic kind.
Embracing tradition
Those beautifully rich jewel tones, which made a strong appearance on the catwalks for autumn, can be used to create a decadent Christmas decorating scheme. These are the shades most of us like to wrap up in come autumn – burgundy, deep blue and dark green – and they’re also traditional festive colours. So if Christmas for you is about feeling super cosy at home, then this is a trend you will love. It’s based around warm colours and snug textiles, such as velvet, faux fur and wool. Dress your tree with baubles in each of these luxurious shades, then add festive greenery and garlands ripe with berries around fireplaces, picture frames and window sills. The effect is almost cocooning! Gold fairy lights and accents will work better than silver, which could feel a little cold alongside these deep, rich shades. Table lamps with a stained-glass shade work beautifully with this scheme as they incorporate the same gorgeous colours and emit a warm, cosy light into the space. To reflect this trend on your Christmas table, choose coloured glassware instead of plain, and gold cutlery instead of silver.
Green and white
Our reignited love with the great outdoors continues and it’s fueling a beautifully fresh, nature-inspired interiors trend for the festive season. During lockdown, we brought the inside out, and this season we’re bringing the outdoors in to create a look that is perfect for those who prefer a bright, Alpine aesthetic. Garden lovers may also like this trend, as a pair of green fingers can come in quite handy! To achieve the look, stick to a nature-inspired colour palette of white and green and include botanical motifs and natural materials around your home. Make the most of white flowers and plants – artificial and real – by dotting them around your living space and using them as centrepieces for your Christmas table. They’ll help to suggest an atmosphere of abundance, which is as important to Christmas as Santa. To begin building a tablescape, drape a linen table runner over a board for a simple but effective starting point. Small succulents work really well as place name holders, continuing the naturalistic theme nicely, while plain white dinner candles will finish off the look beautifully. This is an unfussy and easy-to-create interiors trend, but it’s also very clean...so be mindful of those chocolate-covered fingers on Christmas Day!
A colourful Christmas
This trend is enormous fun and embraces the entire spectrum of colour. At first glance, it says party rather than Christmas, but seasonal motifs and festive figurines will ensure your home looks and feels as Christmassy as any other. Forget about red, green and gold, and instead, try tangy tangerine, electric blue and neon yellow. This trend is vibrant and quirky and it’s anchored around celebratory shades, and the brighter the better. Replace your traditional wreath with something multicoloured instead – you can pull this out repeatedly during the year for any number of occasions as it doesn’t have a traditional festive feel. Subtle gold or silver fairy lights may not have enough impact, so choose multicoloured instead. This trend is all about going that little bit over the top – because if you can’t at Christmas, when can you? So hang primary coloured garlands around the house and be playful by sitting neon signs on the mantelpiece alongside traditional festive ornaments. Decorate your Christmas table with colourful confetti. Your children will love to help you do this!
Silver and gold
If you prefer a look that’s more minimal, then this season’s trend for mixing metallics may appeal. Whereas once, we chose gold or silver to anchor our Christmas decorating scheme, then selected colours to complement accordingly, this year we’re mixing our metallics and removing colour from the equation completely. This trend is glamorous and modern, but there’s also a lot about it that will appeal to children, such as the abundance of twinkling fairy lights, which really make this trend come to life. Colour may be out, but texture is very much part of this trend, so mix your metallic baubles with Christmas tree decorations made from wool, crochet or sequins (children can help out here by making their own). Just keep to neutral shades of vanilla so that the overall look makes sense. Using just silver and gold to dress your Christmas table will create quite a grand aesthetic, so maybe have fun with your table settings by using playful figurines, such as cute snowmen and sweet penguins, as place holders.
We hope our selection of this year’s Christmas interior trends has inspired you for the upcoming festive season. To discover more of this year’s top Christmas trends then be sure to listen to The DnA of Home Interiors Podcast with our founder Deirdre McGettrick and interior designer Audrey Whelan here.
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