Top Five Tips for Styling Your Home for Christmas

With the holidays quickly approaching,  a lot of us are busy getting our homes "holiday ready" but don't know where to start. Top florist and stylist, Yvette Edwards from Wellington New Zealand, has a few festive holiday styling tips that will be sure to complement your Christmas theme perfectly. There is enough to worry about when planning for a holiday gathering - from food preparations, to family visiting from out of town; don’t let your decor stress you out!  

1. Choose your colours and style: For a truly stylish look, pick a colour and theme you’ll enjoy year after year. Whether it’s a simple Scandinavian-inspired look or you decide to go with all glitter and gold, committing to one theme helps to avoid over following trends and buying things that you aren’t excited to unwrap each year. 

2. Mix fresh cleverly: Having fresh flowers, foliage and produce is something nice to add to any home, but it can get a bit much keeping on top of all the watering and replenishing. Try mixing fresh flowers with long-lasting foliage - the foliage will hold the flowers up for longer and you can pull the blooms out through the week and still keep the vase looking lush. You can also try stacking a wide flared vase with luscious green apples in place of fresh flowers or even scatter baubles from your collection mixed with battery led lights just for “something special” on Christmas Day.  

3. Festive lighting: Topping off your homes holiday ambiance with lighting is essential. My general rule is ‘you can’t have enough candles and fairy lights’, but not to the point where you need sunglasses indoors. There are so many lovely options from little sparkling LEDs to romantic candles to buy these days - even the ones powered by battery are great for the front porch or somewhere you might not have power. My lighting “must-do” is to make sure you pack them away properly for next year, it’s never fun if you have to stop hanging your baubles to untangle miles of fairy lights. Make sure to save some of your candles for the Christmas table too. If you do this, it’s a good idea to use really large candles inside a glass holder or on a candle stand since people are relaxing (and probably over indulging) and you don’t want any accidents to deal with.

4. Think creatively: I’m often asked for ideas in creating a centerpiece for your Christmas table at home. The options are endless! Have a look through your homewares and see what collections are in your possession. You can try: a runner of china tea cups with a floating rose in each, cut crystal tumblers and glasses with tea light candles placed inside them, tumbled silk scarves scattered with nuts and fruits, glass preserving jars with sliced oranges and lemons layered with a floating candle on top, or even small milk jugs with mossy branches.  Of course it’s always nice to add some fresh flowers to any of these looks and think about what scents you can add to your home whether with perfumed candles and/or flowers. When I lived in England every year my mother and I would go to Waddesdon Manor at Christmas time, one of my all time favourite trees they had was decorated with all the vintage Christmas ball calling cards from their archives - it was stunning. 

5. Buy a few treasures each year: My own collection of decorations started off with two boxed baubles from a nice department store and then when we got our tree (fresh pine of course) and covered it in lights, I felt compelled to give the lonely decorations some friends. I went out and brought some standard tubes of shiny baubles and added them to the tree. The difference was really striking and I decided at that point - even if it took my whole life  - we would only add carefully chosen Christmas decorations each year. It was then we chose our colour scheme and style and my husband and I have carried that on for a good few years now and still love it. Another highlight is that each of our decorations has a story and we can remember where and when we brought it. 

EXTRA TIP: Christmas Wishes 

When it comes time to pack away all the Christmas cheer and say goodbye to the holidays, we write a secret list of our wishes and goals for the coming year and we pack this list away with the decorations. Wishes range from winning the lottery to moving house to getting more time to read magazine’s etc.. Next holiday season, when you’re opening your boxes of treasures, it’s fun to tick off all of the dreams that came true. 

TO INTERVIEW YVETTE EDWARDS email anne@wonderlandfirm.com or call +64 21 217 1115