Sight
Choosing a colour scheme for the main rooms that you are decorating gives them a chic, sophisticated feel. Perhaps work with three complementary colours, one of which is slightly more dominant. If you are feeling ambitious, then a subtle but stylish festive colour scheme that runs throughout the house creates a gorgeous sense of flow and blending that won’t go unnoticed by your Christmas guests. Having a delicate touch is key here.
Smell
Gingerbread, cinnamon, pine, nutmeg and clove are just some of the signature Christmas scents we all know and love. Let them flow through your home by lighting candles incorporating these notes or integrating them subtly through essential oil diffusers. Fill a vase with cinnamon, eucalyptus, pinecones, dried oranges and star anise for a gorgeous centrepiece.
Touch
Bring Scandinavian ‘hygge’ to your home with warm blankets on the back of sofas and soft velvet table coverings or have hands-off until Christmas velvet festive sacks in deep red, purple or green.
The Christmas tree(s)
Usually thought of as the central feature of any festive decorating, the positioning of your Christmas tree is everything. If you plan to have one tree, put it in the room that you spend the most time in. If you like to have more than one tree, you can have great fun decorating to suit the function and style of the room. Try decorating with a selection of edible hanging treats for a small kitchen tree, or for the children’s rooms perhaps a decorated (non-prickly) branch with Christmas wooden drums, colourful stars and fairies. Putting the tree by a window brings in the natural world and can help frame it, whilst having a tree next to the fireplace gives a wonderful traditional setting for Christmas morning.
Pay attention to detail
Add a sprig of foliage such as rosemary or eucalyptus to your gift wrapping. Perhaps make your bathroom feel effortlessly festive by replacing your hand soap and cream with a signature Christmas scent. Have individually wrapped Christmas bonbons in reach of those who offer to help in the kitchen.
Reimagine architectural features
White fairy lights amongst your bookshelves, or twirled around your staircase or columns can look stunning. If you don't have a roaring fire but do have a fireplace, team it with natural logs and beautiful winter foliage, or vases of baubles.
Have a white Christmas
White decorations mixed with gold or silver are very on trend at the moment. Replace your normal candles, placemats or napkins rings for the festive season with gold and silver for uber style points.
Christmas by candlelight
Candles come into their own at Christmas especially when you have different sizes that are grouped together as part of a stunning collection. Add shape and character to candles that glow beautifully through striking cut-out metal candle holders. Choose glass candlesticks or candle holders or domes for a stunning sculptural ice effect.
Love and light
Place elegant outdoor lanterns in different sizes along your front entrance or porch for an often unexpected transformative effect to your home. Extra lights that pick out house numbers will be a relief for visitors who want to get in out of the cold or for those who are delivering winter goodies.
Bring the outside in
Create a beautiful natural runner by adding a spray of green winter foliage or a berry-covered branch on the mantelpiece. Assemble small vases of sprigs of ivy and holly and Christmas berry stems intertwined between candles for a perfectly blended Christmas touch. Minimalist rugged twig wreaths can be enhanced with sticks of cinnamon and red ribbons. Don’t forget the mistletoe!