Decorating Your Holiday Home
With the Holidays right around the corner, it’s not too early to start thinking about decorating your home. This week, I’m going to give you a way to create a “designer look” with your holiday décor.
If you’d rather get specifics and easy copiable ideas for all areas of your home, click here to purchase our Holiday Decorating Style Guide.
Like any design project, your holiday home is a composition. And building a composition relies on implementing the principles of design to create a unified look.
There are five basic principles of Interior Design. Here they are listed with how to reference them in your holiday decorating.
1. Repetition
Repeating elements, colors, textures, etc. throughout your home allows our eye to connect the spaces and see your home as a composition. Repetition also “calms” things down because different areas, elements, and rooms feel like part of a bigger display. This is important at holiday time as we layer on lots of details and decorations. A unified display also helps with the “busy” feel of all the additional items we have out at this time of year.
2. Balance
Balance is the even distribution of weight. Your eye loves symmetry and equality. Keep in mind – balance can also be asymmetrical so you don’t need to repeat the same thing in multiple places, but think repeating the same sizes, color or textures to create balance. Pull your décor through the house so one room or space isn’t overloaded with holiday decorations. Draw our eye to the focal point of each space.
3. Harmony
Harmony is a feeling. A space is harmonious when it feels “right”. Try adding décor in new spots of your home. Stand back…does it feel too busy? Too small? Another trick is stand at the doorway of the room and squint your eyes. Does the composition feel complete? Move things around, edit, add and subtract until the space is complete and all the elements complements each other. Reference the other principles listed here to try different display options.
4. Scale
Scale refers to size. When items are in good scale with each other, their size and visual weight relate to each other. Consider how big items look next to each other and in a grouping. Does one item overpower all the others? And keep in mind, scale is relative to the surroundings so make sure to measure that tree before you bring it home!
5. Proportion
Proportion is kind of like scale as it compares objects in a composition. But the difference is not only are you comparing things to each other, but you are also comparing the items in the space. Getting proportion right can be tricky but holiday decorating is a great way to practice this principle. Look at ceiling heights, table sizes, and standard clearances in the space as a starting point to decorating with good proportion, then compare items not only to the space overall but to each other. If something feels like it is too small or too big, it probably is. Trust your eye and edit the items out.
Holiday decorating is a great way to practice learning design - if you make a mistake, you can pack it all away a month later unlike a renovation or remodel where you might have to live with it day in day out. Refer to this list as you build your holiday composition piece by piece. And I encourage you to be creative this time of year. Use what you have, add in meaningful homemade and generational decorations to personalize your home – then apply the concepts above to tie it all together. If you’d like to see how I apply these principles in my own home along with specific display ideas for 12 different areas in your home, click here to purchase our style guide to Holiday Decorating.
This year give the gift of Interior Design to someone special on your list.
Watch for our holiday offers coming soon!
Happy Holiday Planning
Angie
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