Searches for “vibrant Christmas” on Pinterest are up about 1,500% on last year. After years of beige, cream and white trees, a lot of people want their apartments to look like a party again.
Color is the easiest way to make a small space feel festive, because a little goes a long way. Here’s how to use it well.
Choose your kind of colorful
There are three main ways to do it, and they look very different.
Rainbow. Every color, usually on a white or flocked tree so the colors pop. Bright and cheerful.
Jewel tones. Emerald, sapphire, ruby, amethyst, with gold. Rich and a bit more grown-up. Looks good with velvet.
Retro brights. Red, green, blue, orange and yellow together, like old-fashioned lights. Nostalgic.
Pick one. They don’t mix well.
The tree
A white tree with a rainbow ornament set (on Amazon) is the simplest version: the white acts as a neutral background. If you have a green tree, jewel tones or retro brights work better than pastels, which can look washed out against green.
On a small apartment tree, a tabletop tree (on Amazon) completely covered in colored ornaments looks more intentional than a bigger tree with gaps.
Lights
Multicolor lights (on Amazon) do half the work. They also make the room glow in colors at night, which is the part people remember. For a jewel tone look, use warm white instead and let the ornaments carry the color.
Beyond the tree
- Bright stockings (on Amazon), each a different color.
- Swap one or two pillows for a saturated color, like emerald velvet (on Amazon).
- Colored candles in plain holders.
- A bowl of colorful ornaments on the coffee table.
- Fairy lights (on Amazon) in a glass jar.
Keeping it deliberate
Colorful only looks messy when it seems random. Two things help:
- Repeat. If there’s pink on the tree, put pink somewhere else in the room too.
- Calm background. Keep the walls, sofa and rug as they are. The color should look like it arrived for the holidays.