Holiday Decor

Red and green will always work. But if your decorations feel a bit random, choosing a color scheme usually helps more than buying more decorations. Three things in the right colors pull a room together better than a dozen ornaments that don’t match. For each palette below I’ve suggested three pieces to start with, and they’re spread across three places in the room: something up high (a garland, the tree), something at table height (candles, a tray), and something soft (a throw, a tree skirt). Three is enough to make the colors feel deliberate without redoing everything. ...

Most wreaths you see that look a bit off are simply the wrong size. An 18-inch wreath on a full-size front door looks lost in the middle of it, and a huge one on a narrow apartment door looks like it’s about to fall on someone. The fix is a quick measurement before you buy. The two-thirds rule Measure the width of your door and aim for a wreath about two-thirds of that. Half the width tends to look skimpy. Anything close to the full width crowds the frame and can catch when the door opens. ...

Minimalist Christmas doesn’t mean not decorating, and it doesn’t mean buying an expensive designer tree either. It means fewer things, each one good enough to stand on its own. With most color taken away, texture and light do the work. Greenery A tree in one color. All matte white, all champagne, or all green ornaments. The trick is mixing finishes within that one color, matte, satin and glass, so it has depth. It looks especially good on a slim tree. Skip the topper or use a plain star in the same tone. ...

A desk has to stay usable in December. Whatever you put on it should either sit somewhere you don’t work, like the top of the monitor or the shelf above, or take up less room than your coffee mug. Off the desk surface A slim garland along the top of the monitor. About 2 feet long and no more than 2 inches thick; a fat garland looks like the monitor is wearing a hat. Hold it with two small clips on the back edge of the monitor, not on the screen. You see it every time you look up, and so do people on your video calls. ...

Porch decorations deal with things the living room never sees: wind, freezing rain, snow, and the occasional ice storm. A wreath that would last all season indoors can be stripped bare by New Year’s outside. Most of the solution is buying the outdoor-rated version of things and fastening everything down properly. The door The right size wreath. Roughly two-thirds the width of the door: 24 inches for a standard 36-inch door, 28 to 30 for double doors. A wreath that’s too big also catches more wind. Outdoor or all-weather wreaths have UV-treated foliage and denser wiring, so gusts don’t strip them. ...

A staircase is visible from the entry, the living room and upstairs, so one well-dressed banister does a lot of work. It usually gets whatever garland is left over, tied on in a straight line. A little more planning makes a big difference. The banister Buy enough garland. About 9 feet of garland (on Amazon) for every 6 feet of banister, so there’s enough slack for it to dip. ...

A 7-foot tree in an apartment takes up around 16 square feet, blocks a window and drops needles into the couch for a month. A well-placed 3-foot tree gives you most of the feeling for a fraction of the space. With small trees, the footprint matters more than the height. A “small” tree with a 30-inch base still takes over a studio. Measure your corner before you shop. Types of small tree Tabletop, 18 to 24 inches. (Example (on Amazon).) About 12 to 18 inches across, so it fits on a sideboard, a shelf or the dining table. Use tiny ornaments, around an inch, and one 20-light strand. In a studio, this plus a wreath on the door is a complete Christmas. ...

A single big centerpiece in the middle of the table has two problems: it blocks people’s view of each other, and there’s never anywhere to put the potatoes. Tables that look good at Christmas tend to be built up in thin layers instead. Each layer is simple, and none of them get in the way of eating. The base A runner, or two. A plain linen runner (on Amazon) down the length of the table, then either a narrower patterned runner (on Amazon) on top or two short runners crossing at each end. The overlap looks richer than one runner alone. A roll of kraft paper works as the bottom layer too: it’s about $10, kids can draw on it, and spills just mean tearing off a piece. ...

A mantel is at eye level and it’s usually where you look first when you walk into the room, so it’s worth getting right. The most common problem is simple: not enough garland. A strand stretched tight across the top looks thin no matter what you add to it. How much garland Buy about two and a half times the width of the mantel. A 48-inch mantel needs around 10 feet (a 9-foot garland (on Amazon) plus a little extra), a 60-inch one about 12 and a half. The extra length is what lets it drape down the sides and dip between hooks instead of sitting flat like a clothesline. ...

The coffee table is what you look at from the couch all evening, so it’s a good place to put some Christmas. It also has to stay usable: mugs, remotes, feet. Every idea below follows the same three steps: Give it an edge. A tray, a runner, a bowl or a mirror. Without a boundary, objects drift around the table and look like clutter. Give it some height. Something taller than the rest, whether that’s a candle, a lantern or a small tree on a couple of books. Give it light. At least one candle or a few fairy lights. LED is easiest if you have kids, pets or a habit of falling asleep on the sofa. Nine arrangements 1. A tray of candles. A big round tray (on Amazon) with three LED pillars (on Amazon) at different heights, a sprig of faux pine between them and a couple of loose ornaments. In January you lift the tray and the table is back to normal. A wood or brass tray works all year. ...