Impress Your Holiday Guests
You’ve been decorating your home for the holidays for years. Why not do something different this time around? “With a little ingenuity, you can turn your house into a wonderland that not only is reflective of the season, but of your personality,” says Sally Morse, director of creative services for Hunter Douglas, a leading name in Canadian window treatments.
Begin with the basics
What counts most in any room, says interior designer Alexa Hampton, are balance, colour, contrast and proportion:
• If you put a big tree at one end of the living room, be sure the other end features something equally “heavy”; a garland wrapped around the stair rail or draped over a large mirror.
• If walls are white or ivory, use deep purple and red accents. Bright pillar candles in glass cloches on the hallway table work well. White-on-white displays offer a casually elegant ambience, e.g. white hydrangeas interspersed with a few lemons.
• If the front door is extremely tall or wide, mount two wreaths instead of one.
Choose your colours
It’s not written in stone that you must employ red and green for the holidays. Maybe you love pinks and yellows, rich jewel tones like garnet and sapphire, or crisp black-and-white.
Wreaths look lovely beribboned in nearly any colour, from hot pink to cool citrus. Trees can be monochromatically decorated with one colour as well as a rainbow of hues, and centerpieces composed of silver bowls overflowing with Granny Smith apples or clementines are exceptionally eye-catching.
Something for every room in the house
No mantel? No problem. There’s something you can do to make every room festive… without going overboard.
• Replace the hallway runner with something in tune with the holidays, perhaps a dark tartan or free-form line pattern done in gold on black. Change the shades in one or more of the rooms; it’s as transformative as new wall colour. As wintertime is fast-approaching, look for treatments that offer optimal energy efficiency, like highly insulating Hunter Douglas Duette Architella Trielle honeycomb shades. They can help reduce heat loss at the window by up to 45 percent.
• Have the kids cut out snowflakes from construction paper in white or a colour that coordinates with their bedrooms. Tie on various lengths of ribbons in the colour of their choice and then affix to the ceiling.
• Don’t forget the bathroom, especially the one used by guests. A bowl of lavender plus a sprig of it tied to the shower head look special and adds a delicious scent.
• Wrap dining room chairs with ribbon, a tree ornament or name card tied at the back with a bow.
“Plan ahead,” says Morse, “testing some of the concepts described here to see if they’re right for your home and family. Doing that not only will guarantee a more joyous celebration for all, but provide a lot of fun for everyone right now.”
Courtesy: Homeservice Club