In our last post, we talked about preparing items in your home and your dining room for Thanksgiving and the holiday season. If you haven’t gotten started, now’s the perfect time to begin. The air is getting colder, holiday displays have long been up in the stores, and you’re beginning to wrack your brain for gift ideas for those hard-to-buy-for people in your life. The first Christmas songs are popping up on the radio, and you feel an urge to cuddle up inside with a cozy blanket, a mug of hot chocolate and your favorite holiday-themed movies.
There can only be one explanation for these and other signs of the season. The holidays are truly almost here.
Decorating is one aspect of the holiday season that many people look forward to all year. People love to put up a tree and drape it with ornaments. They enjoy placing candles in the window, icicle lights along their roofs, and evergreen garlands along their mantelpieces.
One thing you may not have thought about decorating is your furniture. When it comes to preparing for the holiday season, there’s no reason to leave your furniture out. Let your creativity run wild this year as you experiment with new ways to give your furniture a holiday makeover.
Why Update Your Furniture for the Holidays?
Updating your furniture for the holidays is all about getting into the holiday spirit. There’s something about being surrounded by holiday-themed items that makes you feel more joyful, more cheerful, and more excited about the season ahead of you.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. We all feel much more like celebrating when our trees go up and holiday songs are playing. Why shouldn’t this level of holiday festivity extend to the furniture as well? However, if this isn’t reason enough, here are several more reasons to decorate your furniture for the holiday season.
1. It Shakes Things Up
Everyone loves to change things around every so often. It’s why we rearrange our furniture, repaint our walls, and buy new clothes, even though our old ones aren’t worn out. We like to keep things fresh and exciting. Otherwise, we get bored and might feel like we’re stuck in a rut.
This applies to furniture as well. There’s nothing so effective at shaking up your living room as reimagining your couch or decorating your TV stand.
2. It Gives You Something to Look Forward to
Maybe you have a favorite decoration or holiday-themed item you only bring out for a few short weeks around the holidays. Half the fun is having this piece out and on display. The other half of the fun comes from simply anticipating bringing it out of storage and enjoying it every day.
Furniture decorating can fulfill this same desire. Maybe it’s a holiday-themed throw blanket you use to spice up your sofa every winter. Or maybe it’s a special angel statue you use in your table centerpiece. Whatever it is, it’s exciting to look forward to having it out every year.
3. It Ties Your Decorating Together
By adding a little pop of holiday cheer to your various pieces of furniture, you can help tie the entire house together. For example, you might have a decorated mantelpiece and a tree in the corner, but your sofa doesn’t fit in. It doesn’t look like it’s ready for the season, and it doesn’t fit with the decorations in the rest of the room. By adding these extra touches to your furniture, you can help bring the whole room and house together.
How to Update Your Living Room Furniture for the Holiday Season
Since the living room is almost always the center of festivities and celebrations, it’s important for this room to be up to the task. If you have a tree, it may be in here, so all that remains is to make the rest of the room look just as festive.
1. Cozy up the Couch
Nothing makes a couch and chairs cozier than adding some cold-weather accessories. Pick up some holiday-themed throw pillows and place them artistically on the seats. Consider picking a few different pillows that don’t match perfectly but complement one another and the colors in the rest of the room.
To make your couch extra cozy, add some fluffy holiday-themed blankets. Just drape these over the back or the arms, so they look decorative but are also easily accessible when it gets chilly.
2. Light the Windows
There’s nothing cheerier than driving past houses during this season and seeing the windows all lit up in holiday style. Take your inspiration from this and find unique ways to light up your windows. Light candles and set them in your windows to shine out at people driving past. Choose electric candles for peace of mind. If candles aren’t your style, try lining the windows in twinkling string lights. Add wreaths to the window for a little extra holiday spirit.
3. Style Your Mantelpiece
Not everyone has a beautiful mantelpiece, but if you do, you know there’s no better place for decorations. Hang your stockings from the mantle and let them be a decoration all season long, instead of just on Christmas Eve. The mantle is also a great place for other decorations. These can differ according to your tastes, but some examples include:
· Holiday greenery
· Candles and candlesticks
· Previous years’ holiday family photos
· Holiday-themed figurines like angels, Santas, and snowmen
4. Don’t Forget the Side Tables
Side tables, end tables, and coffee tables are great places to cluster a few decorative ornaments that will provide a dash of festivity to your living room. Don’t overload these pieces of furniture, however. These are meant to be functional spaces, and you don’t want to suddenly find yourself with no room to put down your mug of coffee or TV remote. Still, there’s no reason you can’t add some decorative items, like small figurines, candles, or other lighted ornaments.
5. Use Your Tree as a Centerpiece
If you and your family or friends celebrate the holiday season by setting up a Christmas tree, this makes an ideal centerpiece and focal point to your other decorations. Even if your tree is situated in a corner, it can still serve as the most prominent decoration and immediately draw the eye when you enter the room. Add plenty of decorations, a few presents that might be real or decorative, and some twinkling lights to complete the magical holiday feel.
Holiday Decorating in the Bedroom
Even though holiday parties are usually limited to living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, and the more communal spaces of the house, there’s still plenty of decorating to be done in the bedrooms. Your bedroom furniture could use just as much holiday updating as anywhere else in the house.
Make the Bed a Focal Point
This is an easy one. Spruce up any bed for the holiday season by switching out the comforter and pillow shams you use during the rest of the year for special holiday ones. Not only will this help your bedroom feel festive, but it will help also bring some change and excitement after a year of looking at the same bedspread. Choose a pretty holiday color like red, white, or something that features a winter pattern. You might even add a fluffy holiday throw blanket across the end of the bed.
Decorate the Nightstands and Dresser
These decorations might look like the ones you used on your side tables in the living room. Just bring a little dash of holiday verve by adding greenery, candles, or lights. Depending on your style, you might branch into angel figures, or Santa’s reindeer and sleigh sets. If you want to keep things simple, with just the smallest touch of the holidays, opt for previous years’ holiday family photos in pretty frames.
Light up the Windows
If you started a theme in the rest of the house with candles, wreaths, or garlands in the window, don’t forget to carry this into your bedroom for consistency. An electric candle in the windowsill might even make a pleasant nightlight as you fall asleep.
General Tips for Holiday Decorating
No matter which room you’re decorating, these tips apply across the board and will help turn your house into a holiday wonderland that strikes the perfect balance between festive, fun, and classic.
· Keep it classic: Everyone wants to get into the holiday mood, but there is always such a thing as too much. Your decorations should look tasteful, not garish, and your furniture and rooms should still be perfectly functional.
· Maintain a color scheme: Individual rooms should tie together by using similar color palettes. You have more freedom from room to room, although you can certainly coordinate the entire house if you choose. For example, if you decide to use mostly blue ornaments on your tree, try adding a blue blanket on the couch with some white throw pillows.
· Remember children and pets: If you don’t have children or pets, you have unlimited freedom regarding which decorations you choose. However, if you have very small children or rowdy pets, be aware that not every decoration is the best choice. You may be best off sticking to non-breakable decorations. If you do choose delicate ornaments, be conscious of where you place them and do your best to keep them out of the reach of children and pets.
If you follow these tips and bring your own ideas to the table, your home will put you in a holly jolly mood in no time!
If your furniture isn’t bringing your holiday vision to life, visit your local Badcock store for a wide selection of items you will love at affordable prices. Our easy financing makes it easier to furnish your home than to figure out what’s actually in your Aunt’s fruitcake!
