Decorate Your Home This Christmas

We’ve put together an easy follow guide for how to decorate your home this Christmas. Discover the trends for Christmas 2024, tips to help choose the colour scheme, Christmas decoration ideas and more.

Seven Christmas decorating trends for 2024

1. When it comes to a Christmas colour palette, white and red are the festive all time favourites. For an on trend look add bright pops of pink or gold. Alysha Alli, our head of interiors, said: “Blending a bright palette with uplifting colour combinations commands a playful and vibrant atmosphere to your home this Christmas.” Decide on your colour scheme and carry it through from the door wreath to the hall to the formal lounge, family dining kitchen and beyond.
2. Prioritise classic Christmas decor items for a sense of nostalgia and style your home with hearth garlands, stockings and wreaths. “Incorporating twinkle and frosted effects evokes a snowy winter scene withing your home. Decorate baubles to create a bespoke craft feeling to the home with snow textures, macrame and dazzling mantle displays. Adding those finishing touches, such as embellishments, shimmer, and twinkle, help add a splash of magic and wonder to your holiday décor,” Alysha added.
3. Add an abundance of baubles to trees mixing them with chain link retro sparkle adorned around the tree this year. Mantle displays remain key this year, for an over-the-top maximalist look use oversized baubles, hung at various different lengths from velvet ribbon, blended with a faux greenery garland with twinkling lights makes a real style statement.
4. The circus trend is about embracing the whimsical and incorporating a bold surrealism theme to your home at Christmas. “Think red and white stripes, reminiscent of circus tents, combined with retro kitsch elements,” Alysha added.
5. Design with darkness with near-black/brown tones for a more sophisticated look. Pair tinted darks with Bordeaux red velvet and black jewel baubles. “Utilise black and brown shades and tones while focusing on creating rich textures,” Alysha suggested. “Mix these dark hues with lush botanicals and unexpected materials like metals and oxidised glass while incorporating heavily dip-dyed elements to blend hard and soft textures seamlessly.”
6. Harmonise your Christmas wrapping to the colour scheme including textiles in high shine and velvety materials in ribbons for gift wrap, table dressings, and faux floral arrangements. “When wrapping gifts, use ribbons mixed with matte paper for a striking contrast or add jewels and red velvet accents, complemented by a touch of greenery, for a luxurious feel,” Alysha said.
7. Integrate biophilia using an intriguing, inviting mix of plants, flowers and produce to celebrate festive abundance. Holly, ivy and pinecones are a great way to bring nature into your home at Christmas.

Three tips for decorating your living room for Christmas

The living room or lounge is often the primary room you use for hosting and socialising, so you’ll want to get it dressed in its festive best. The bay window of the four-bedroom Oxford, from our Heritage Collection, is the ideal place to put your Christmas tree but there are lots of other ways to give your home a seasonal refresh.

1. By styling up your bay window with your favourite decorations such as a twinkling garland or wreath to help spread festive cheer throughout your neighbourhood.
2. Handcrafted paper snowflakes, hung at different heights from velvet ribbon make for a stylish window display. “White paper snowflakes are a timeless classic, but you could use different colours in keeping with your Christmas colour scheme or add a touch of sparkle with gold leaf paint,” Alysha suggested.
3. Descending botanical-filled baubles in the window or above the fireplace, hung at different heights creates that added drama and intrigue.

Three tips for decorating your kitchen and dining room for Christmas

Redrow homes are designed for their spacious kitchens to function as a real social hub, so a bit of festive decoration can tie in the themes all around the rest of the house.

1. Decorating your kitchen for Christmas involves adding adornments to your worktops, windowsills and furniture pieces. Layer ribbon in different textures, colour and shimmer, by using traditional tartan ribbon blended with gold shimmer to create a really simple yet striking look. Or you can tie a wide red ribbon around the back of your stools and add a sprig of traditional fir leaves or holly at the back.
2. In our larger homes, such as the Sandringham, Blenheim and Highgrove we’ve included a dedicated dining room, but whether you’ve a separate dining room or open-plan kitchen/diner, Christmas dining room decorations tend to focus around the table. Choose a beautiful Christmas table centrepiece that will set the tone. We like to utilise a Christmas door wreath as a centrepiece placed with a large, oversized candle in the centre, when lit the whole space will smell of Christmas! Add a natural garland as a table runner, adorned with small snowy white lights and bleached decorations. Keep the rest of the space simple and complementary by adding white, and natural tones, together with snow-tipped accessories.
3. Bring nonfunctional decor to the tabletop for a maximalist look in line interior trend in 2024 this year.

Don’t forget to leave that treat plate out for Santa too on Christmas Eve!

Find out more about the top kitchen design trends.

Six Christmas tree decorating tips

At Redrow, we’ve had experience creating winter wonderlands in countless show homes, and have helped many a new homeowner with Christmas decorating inspiration over the years. So, we have lots of Christmas tree ideas and tips for how to decorate a Christmas tree.

1. Real trees generate that authentic festive scent. If you opt for an artificial tree for practical reasons, choose a traditionally shaped green tree with no sprayed edges. For added convenience you could opt for a Christmas tree with lights integrated.
2. Start with the Christmas tree lights – and work from the inside out as you don’t want to see wires showing in front of your decorations. Make sure you wrap them right around your tree to create a lovely back glow.
3. Add garlands or chains of decorations, starting from the bottom with the large items and working your way up with the smaller sizes decorations.
4. Add your baubles, place your key pieces then work your way around with the smaller accent items. Adorning your tree with texture, beads, faux snow placed on a selection of lights gives the tree an added bespoke feeling and magic.
5. Having a faux tree doesn’t mean you have to miss out on Christmassy scents. Use reed diffusers or introduce oranges, cloves, eucalyptus and cinnamon sticks to your décor.
6. Look after your festive decorations by wrapping carefully when it’s time to pack them away. A great way to wrap your Christmas lights away for next year is by using an old clothes hanger and wrapping them around this or a kitchen roll inner.

10 sustainable Christmas decoration ideas

Buying a whole new set of Christmas decorations every year simply isn’t sensible or sustainable. Follow the three Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle your existing decorations to create a whole new festive look. “Reusing and repurposing items you already have and embracing the charm of handmade and sustainable decor will help achieve a warm and meaningful holiday look this year,” Alysha said.

1. Reusable advent calendars will reduce waste and can be filled with a variety of items so that there’s a surprise gift every day in the run up to Christmas. From sweets and chocolates to toiletries and toys, the filling can be tailored to the recipient.
2. Choose baubles made from 100% recycled glass instead of plastic and make sure you pack them away carefully in January ready to be reused next year.
3. Buy local from websites like Etsy. Bespoke baubles made by a local craftsperson is much better for the environment than mass market.
4. Enhance a garland, wreath or table centrepiece by adorning said wreath with various sized baubles from Christmas pasts.
5. Become a festive forager. “Bring natural elements into your décor by combining foliage such as pinecones, acorns and holly into your Christmas garlands,” Alysha suggested.
6. Design a sustainable Christmas decoration by stringing popcorn, cranberries or slices of dried fruit together.7. Kitchen roll tubes can be repurposed and upcycled to make crafty Christmas decorations such as your own Christmas crackers!
7. Use fabric offcuts and ribbon from birthdays which you have kept to one side and create a super simple beautiful piece that the family will love! It’s a fun festive activity the children can help with too.
8. Repurpose old Christmas stockings by sending them to a local craft queen to create a sentimental blanket or cushion to help keep memories of Christmas past alive.
9. Craft your own decorations either from scratch or using a kit. “You could even add a nostalgic touch to your decorations by making your own link paper chains. This is a great way of getting the entire family involved for a more wholesome and personalised Christmas,” Alysha suggested.
10. Create your own Christmas wreath by using old baubles. Rather than throwing them away, stick them to a polystyrene ring bought from a craft shop using a glue gun. Place the larger baubles first then work your way around the ring with smaller. This also hits the mark for this year’s maximalist circus trend!

If you want to live a more sustainable lifestyle, all year round, we have a range of energy efficient new homes available. For example, our Eco Electric homes feature air source heat pumps and underfloor heating.

We’ve also put together an easy to follow guide to a sustainable house move.