Colour in the home
Add a festive touch of sumptuous sophistication to your home this Christmas by introducing dark berry and rich liquor shades that will create a luxurious look:
- Lounges, bedrooms and dining areas can be transformed quickly and easily by creating 1 feature wall with ornately patterned wallpaper in berry shades that take beige rooms from being bland to ‘berry beautiful’!
- If wallpapering isn’t your strong point then a simpler option is to apply a decorative wall sticker that is easy to stick on and peel off. Choose a festive design for the holidays and replace with a different design for a fresh start to the New Year!
- The simplest and most striking change you can make to your lounge this Christmas is a new wine coloured carpet. Cosy, comforting, practical and warm, a new carpet adds colour and a luxurious texture that creates a new depth within your rooms.
- When thinking about actual Christmas decorations, using a limited number of complimentary colours (rather than a mish-mash of everything you’ve collected over the years) is key to creating a co-ordinated look that is stylish. Damson, blackberry, rich red and plum shades with black and soft gold make up the key colours for Christmas 2009.
- Take inspiration from Christmas store window displays and create your own ‘mantelscape’ or ‘shelfscape’: Fill tall glass vases with baubles, then add mini Christmas trees, wooden reindeer ornaments, pine cones sprayed gold and finish with fir branches to soften the edges of the scene. Collections of complimentary baubles can also be strung at different heights from chandeliers and wall lights.
Using colour & pattern within the home:
Now is a great time to banish beige blandness and start putting some personality back into our home environments after the difficulties of the recession.
Achieve this with injections of bold painted colour blocking, infusions of statement patterned wallpaper and textiles, eclectic mixes of vintage and contemporary furniture and global fusions of accessories. This brings rooms to life, adds character and stops our homes looking like soulless show houses.
Carpeting can play a significant part in this. It offers one of the biggest opportunities to add colour, pattern and texture to any room…so don’t leave it as an afterthought.
Carpet can help to forge a relationship between a rooms furniture, walls, lighting and window treatments, pulling the décor together. It is the simplest single purchase you can make to completely update, refresh and transform any room in your home.
Be brave in your decorating choices and express your own unique personality through the décor of your home.
Create a cosy feel at home
Andrea Maflin’s top tips for creating a cosy feel in your home this Christmas.
I love Christmas, it’s the excuse I need to inject some bejewelled colours and sparkle back into the home. I decorate my home from top to bottom. With some simple and stylish touches that can set the scene and guarantee that home is the only place you’ll want to be this holiday.
A welcoming hallway dressed for Christmas
The hall
Welcome your guest in style by giving your hallway a touch of Christmas. The main living areas tend to get all the attention. The hallway is often over looked. It is however the first place that you will receive your guests and family so don’t leave it looking bare. Add a real or artificial wreath on the door adorned with hot pinks roses and rich heather shades or alternatively real limes and lilac Hydrangea’s with clusters of ball balls, birds and tiny wrapped presents with contrasting ribbon.
The hall should make a big statement. Add a focal point to the hall with accent of strong berry colours and if space allows add a console table with a mirror hung above. Decorate the mirror with a homemade evergreen hand tie of foliage from the garden or off cuts from the Christmas tree which will add the instant fragrance of Christmas with a simple hand tie held together and with rich berry coloured satin ribbons in red and plums and a few well chosen ball balls to accompany the scheme.
Finally fill any remaining glass vases with left over ball balls in red, plums and aubergine to finish off the look. I buy large afford packs of ball balls from supermarkets or DIY sheds. Then I interspaced them with a few special ball balls to achieve the look but on a budget.
Stair rail garland tied securely to the hand rail, made from a series of artificial garlands secured in place with wide satin ribbons that hang down in between the spindles all of which I recycle each year. On to which I decorate with handfuls of plastic coloured ball balls rather than glass ones, to suit the opulent coloured theme.
Cozy room with burning fire place and Christmas tree.
The living room
Create a warming festive atmosphere in an instant by adding wall to wall carpet in a rich berry shade which works wonderfully well with dark wooden furniture and golden metallic accents. It will give instant warmth and is a really practical solution for entertaining. For an alternative Christmassy look this year, be bold and add this Christmas colours in inky blues and charcoal with gold and copper glitter accents. How to achieve either look is to paint the fireplace or the alcoves in one or two shades lighter than the carpet to create an impact and a real style statement.
The tree is centre stage. I choose a real tree a Blue spruce because it holds its needles, smells Christmassy and has full branches and can take the weight of all of those ball balls. I like to add a series of feather doves, brightly coloured parrots and my Grandmothers decorations that have survived for over 100 years old.
Dress your fireplace to impress by grouping a series candle sticks and coloured tea lights with glass beaded sprays and carry the colour theme through onto the mantel piece with coloured vases filled with bejewelled coloured flowers in reds, hot pinks, purples and flashes of orange.
Kitchen
You’re going to spend a lot of time in her over the Christmas season in the Kitchen so why not make it feel like part of the home. Add potted Amaryllis bulbs they last for weeks. Paint a focal wall a strong shade to transform the space.
Christmas holiday dining table elegant place setting.
Dining room
Give your dining room the star treatment with gorgeous decorations. Use natural or brightly coloured linen and glamorous touches of opulent red and plums with accent of gold’s. Make the table is the focal point. It’s the smallest details that count. If you’re on a budget this year perhaps instead of a large gift for friends and family give a small token, gift wrapped on each plate with hand written personalized name cards. Create a centrepiece with a long garland that runs down the length of the table or a wreath adored with fresh or artificial flowers that can be recycled each year. In additional add a series of candlesticks or tea lights or a low-level flower arrangement. Plant a small Christmas tree in a container and cover with fabric and decorate it to that carry the Christmas theme through into the dining room.
Bedroom
Wake up to Christmas for a perfect start to a very special morning. Hang decorative stockings along the fireplace or the end of the bed. Use miss match fabrics in mint and aqua shades with hints of silver and white for a modern take on the Christmas colours.
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