Living Room Decor

Garland does a lot for the money. One good strand changes a mantel, a staircase or a doorway more than almost anything else you can buy. The two common mistakes are buying too little of it and buying faux garland so cheap it looks like plastic. Fresh or faux Fresh garland smells like Christmas, and nothing else really does. A cedar or fir garland on the mantel scents the room for two or three weeks. ...

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. ...

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 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 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. ...

When you walk in, you see the window. When you sit on the couch, you see the walls. In a small apartment, those are the surfaces that make it feel like Christmas, and they use no floor space at all. Windows A lit garland around the frame. Run a pre-lit garland (on Amazon) along the top and down the sides with warm-white lights woven through. Three removable hooks per window are enough. A 6-foot garland frames a standard 36-inch window with a little left over to drape at the corners. From outside, it glows. ...

You probably look at your TV stand for a few hours every evening, so if there’s no room for a tree, it’s a good place to put Christmas instead. These ideas are sized for a typical 50 to 65-inch TV setup. A few rules for the whole stand: keep anything tall to the sides so it never blocks the screen, group things in odd numbers, and leave some empty space. ...