An apartment door in a shared hallway doesn’t get a porch, planters or a lantern either side. But it’s the first thing you see when you come home, and a little Christmas on it makes the whole corridor nicer for the neighbors too. The limits are mostly about the building: no damage to the door, nothing that blocks the hallway, nothing that’s a fire risk. Within those, there’s plenty you can do. ...
Most apartments don’t have a fireplace, and stockings still need to go somewhere. The good news is that once you stop thinking “mantel,” there are lots of places that work just as well, and most don’t need a single nail. A stocking stand The easiest answer: a floor-standing stocking holder (on Amazon). It’s a freestanding post with hooks, and it can go anywhere: next to the tree, beside the TV, by the front door. Once Christmas is over it comes apart and goes in a closet. ...
Decorating cookies is more fun than baking them, and it’s much more fun if the baking’s already done. The secret to a decorating afternoon that doesn’t end in frustration is doing nearly everything ahead of time, so the table is just cookies, icing and sprinkles. The day before Bake the cookies. A basic sugar cookie dough, rolled about a quarter inch thick and cut with simple shapes (on Amazon): trees, stars, stockings, round ornaments. Big simple shapes are easier for kids to decorate than fiddly ones. Let them cool completely on racks (on Amazon) and store them flat in a container overnight. ...
A small apartment is actually a good place for a holiday party. People stand closer, conversations overlap, and it feels busy with fewer guests. You just have to plan where people will stand, where the drinks go and where all the coats end up. How many people A rough guide: about one person for every 10 square feet of floor you can clear. A 300-square-foot living area that’s half furniture fits around 15 people standing, fewer if most of them want to sit. If you’re inviting more than that, plan for people in the kitchen too, because that’s where they’ll go anyway. ...
A full tree in a small apartment takes a corner of the room for a month and then a corner of a closet for the rest of the year. If that’s not worth it to you, there are plenty of ways to have something tree-shaped, or at least tree-like, that take up much less space. Things that stand on the floor or a table 1. Lit branches in a vase. A tall vase with battery-lit branches (on Amazon), or real bare branches with a strand of lights wound through. Hang a few light ornaments from them. It takes up about as much floor as a lamp. ...
A hot cocoa bar is one of the easiest ways to make December feel like December, and it doesn’t need a big kitchen. It needs one flat surface, something that keeps cocoa hot, and a few jars of things to put on top. Where to put it Not on the kitchen counter you cook on. A bar cart, a sideboard, the end of a console or even a cleared shelf of a bookcase works. You need about two feet of surface: one foot for the cocoa and mugs, one foot for toppings. ...
Everyone who comes over walks down the hallway at least twice, and it’s usually the one place nobody decorates. It’s narrow, so it can’t hold much on the floor, but the walls, the ceiling and the far end are all free. The floor A runner. A Christmas runner rug (on Amazon) covers the whole length of the hall, which makes it the biggest single change you can make here. Get one about two feet shorter than the hallway so a bit of floor shows at each end. Low pile is easier: doors swing over it, and pine needles vacuum off. ...
In December the sideboard does a lot of work: extra plates, the dessert, the candles that didn’t fit on the table. Decorating it is mostly about planning for that, so there’s still room to set a dish down. A sideboard is low and long, so it needs some height. The wall above it does half the job. The base A garland along the top. A faux garland (on Amazon) the length of the sideboard, hanging 4 to 6 inches over each end. Everything else sits in it. Faux rather than fresh, because fresh garland drops needles into the food. Fluff every branch out before you start; a thin garland makes everything on it look thin. ...
A balcony is the part of your apartment the whole street can see. It’s also awkward to decorate: there’s usually no outdoor outlet, the lease has rules, the neighbors are close, and the wind gets everywhere. None of that rules it out. It just changes what you buy and how you hang it. Check the lease first Most leases are fine with temporary holiday decorations, but nearly all of them ban screws or nails into the outside of the building. Some limit how heavy balcony planters can be, a few restrict real greenery or blinking lights, and HOAs sometimes have rules about dates and colors. It takes five minutes to read the balcony section. ...
On a tree, a lot of ornaments end up facing the wall or lost near the back. If you’re not putting a tree up this year, or you have more ornaments than branches, you can spread them around the apartment where people can actually see them. A big tree holds 80 to 100 ornaments; most of these ideas use somewhere between 5 and 20. In bowls and under glass A large glass bowl (on Amazon). Big ornaments on the bottom, smaller ones on top, with a strand of battery fairy lights (on Amazon) tucked in so it glows. The bowl needs to be big, at least 12 inches, or it looks like storage. Thrift stores have plenty. ...