Quick and Elegant Christmas Decorating Ideas

I love a festively decorated house at holiday time, but don’t want to spend days putting everything together. I used to hang hundreds of ornaments, ribbons, stockings, garlands, and lights all over my house. Now I still want a festive effect, but with less effort, so I can have more time to celebrate. Over the years I’ve come up with ways to get dazzling effects more easily. Here’s how I put together quick and elegant Christmas decor, including centerpieces, mantel decor, and miniature holiday trees.

When you decorate for holidays, it’s tempting to spread decorations over every surface, wall, and window. Sure, this more-is-more decorating scheme can be delightful! It celebrates abundance and cheerful excess. However, it takes a lot of time to set up and remove. And when taken to extremes, decor can overtake the space you need for dining, games, relaxing, and holiday activities. Happily, you can get a feeling of holiday abundance by choosing a few focal points and just decorating those.

Cheery, Easy Christmas Trees

If you celebrate Christmas, a tree is the usual holiday focal point. But if you haven’t time or space for a full-sized tree, why not decorate one or more small trees? Try two or three, and make those the stars of your home. You’ll find that small fake trees are much easier to set up than real trees. They don’t need to be assembled or repurchased every year, and they come prelit. Once they’re up, you can shape their wired branches in about a minute.

Just place each one on a side table, coffee table, or dining table. A small (two-to-three-foot) tree, real or fake, can look great on a kitchen peninsula or island. If you use multiples, you can give each one a theme, if you like. Spread multiples around an apartment or house for a luxurious feeling.

My home has a large, real tree because that’s important to my partner. But a live or cut tree isn’t necessary to create elegant Christmas decor. And you don’t have to stop with one tree if you don’t want to! We also have two small fake trees that came wired with lights. They make for elegant Christmas decor in smaller spaces, especially kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms, or small apartments.

I decorate the smallest tree with silver, blue, and white ornaments. This tree also displays my collection of Wedgwood ornaments. I place it on my piano in the living room. I hold its base in place by piling heavy books on it. Then I cover the base with a pretty shawl or a small woven blanket swirled around the bottom, soft-serve ice-cream-style.

Themed trees

My other tiny tree stands on the island in my kitchen. I duct tape its feet to the granite so it doesn’t get knocked over. Then I cover the tape with a pretty bed sheet wrapped around the base. The tree is covered in cheering little treasures, including a dozen Belleek porcelain ornaments, most shaped like Irish lighthouses. I got them for a steal at an online auction. Thrift shops and auctions are fantastic places to find beautiful holiday decor for very little money. (I found a $100 Waterford crystal compote at Goodwill for $3.99!)

If you like, you can cover a little tree with objects that follow a theme. This is a great whimsical way to decorate a small tree for little or no money. For example, you can cover a kitchen tree with utensils, measuring cups, and mixing beaters, and a corkscrew. Top with a funnel instead of a star.

Other quickie tree decorations for no money

Even if you don’t have many ornaments, you may already own things can double as festive tree decorations:

• Glass suncatchers
• Oversized earrings or pendants
• Pretty brooches—slide an ornament hook through the pin on the back
• Small toys—tiny dolls, stuffed animals, trains, or Matchbox cars
• Ribbons—tie an assortment of pretty ribbons all over your tree
• Collections—tie wine corks or bangle bracelets to your tree with twine or ribbon

Gather Ornaments in Bowls, Trays, Vases, or Baskets

One way to make a statement centerpiece is to gather ornaments in a single color or coordinating color group. Try pale blue and soft green with silver, or red with pink and white. Then pile them into large, clear, cylindrical glass vases. These vases are inexpensive and easy to find at import stores or big box stores like Target. They’re even cheaper at thrift shops. I cluster three or four of differing sizes on a dining table, sideboard or credenza, or on a mantel. I find these provide easy yet elegant Christmas decor.

Cylinders full of color, sparkle, and glass balls of varying sizes nestling into each other look sculptural and elegant. They’re also easy to move around if I need to make room for more serving dishes at dinnertime. Placing glass decorations inside large vases also keeps delicate ornaments out of the way of pets or small children.

Want another quick and easy option? Combine vases, bowls, or planters of flowers with containers of various ornaments, candle-holders, and containers of candies. One easy way to do this is to start with a large tray and contain all the items within it. You can move a tray in an instant if you need space for dishes or games.

I vary the height of the objects on each tray to make them more interesting. A glass, metal, china, or crystal compote holds a pillar candle or a cluster of candies, cookies, or ornaments above the rest of a tray. A few tall taper candles in brass, glass, or silver candlesticks make for elegant Christmas decorating options.

Let your home shimmer and shine

For drama and elegance, include plenty of reflective surfaces like glass or metal. These add sparkle to your decor even without electric lights or candles.

Strings of lights are wonderful, but needing a power source for them limits where you can put them. You can buy LED strings that run on batteries, and these can go anywhere you like. But battery-operated light strings tend to be fairly short, and you’ll have to find a way to hide the string’s bulky battery box.

Of course, you can also skip electrified lighting. Just let mirrored surfaces, candles, and cut glass do the sparkling for you.

Cluster Assorted Stemware

I love mixing vintage stemware of all heights and types on a mantle or sideboard, or in centerpieces. Many people only use stemware on special occasions. Most of us go for simpler dishwasher-safe housewares nowadays, there’s much less call for vintage engraved or cut-glass stemware. That means these pieces are easy to find for a pittance at yard sales, thrift shops, and online auctions.

You can often find beautiful goblets, flutes, coupes, and cordials for under $1 apiece. Fill a few with tiny glass Christmas balls, or with candies wrapped in shimmery foil. Hershey’s Kisses, Lindt chocolate balls, or Mozart kugeln look pretty piled into a delicate coupe glass. Add a few glass candlesticks with lit candles, and the candlelight will dance all over the surrounding stemware.

Less Is More

Minimalist decor can be exquisite. To get the most elevated effect, stick with a simple color scheme. I like silver with pale blue, light green with turquoise, or red with white. Skip patterns, or use them sparingly. Choose larger pieces of decor or serving ware to avoid fussiness. Using many small pieces can be at odds with a sleek modernist aesthetic. Choose one color of metal (usually silver or gold) to use throughout. Incorporate that metallic tone into your scheme using trays, bowls, or serving ware.

For a more subtle minimalist look, focus on neutrals like glossy white or clear glass. Let shape, texture, and shine take over from color as your primary decorative elements.

For the best results, use plenty of lights—candles, strings of lights, or overhead spots. These reflect the decor and add a shimmering sparkle or a warm glow.

But Wait! Sometimes, More Is More

Elegant minimalist decor is rarely described as lush or cozy. These words are usually reserved for maximalist interiors and decorations. At holiday time, we usually gravitate toward abundance and extravagance, since that usually feels more generous and friendly. But you may not have the space, time, money, or patience to create a maximalist space. If you want a feeling of generosity or grandeur with minimal effort, here are some shortcuts.

Cluster and layer

One way to build a feeling of abundance is to layer pieces on top of each other. Place a tray on top of a runner, for example. Then place a plate, bowl, or pedestal on the tray. Place cuttings of evergreen holly, ivy, or other leafy plants around the base of the dish. Then fill that dish with fresh fruit, cookies, or ornaments. Voila—you have a centerpiece with lots to look at in a small amount of space.

Another option is to cluster three or more pillar candles on candlesticks of varying heights. Using odd numbers of candlesticks works best. This avoids having it look like you were trying to match things up but couldn’t get things quite right. And don’t think items need to be symmetrical! Asymmetry is actually more pleasing to the eye, and easier to do well. Leave the pillar candles as is for minimalist elegance, or surround them with plant cuttings for a lusher effect.

Don’t forget to add fresh greens

Live plants, flowers, or cut greens make a home feel livelier. Plants or cut flowers can be expensive, though. One great alternative is to grab potted plants that you already have around the house, or cut branches of evergreen plants from your garden. Then arrange them in vases around your home. If you don’t have vases on hand, repurpose china, silverplate, pewter, or glass teapots or pitchers to hold your greenery.

Don’t have evergreens in your home or garden? Stop by a local tree farm or garden center. In December, they usually have fragrant evergreen branches, holly branches, and mistletoe swags available for purchase for just a few dollars. Place them around your home on mantels, coffee tables, and dining tables. If you use holly or sharp-needled evergreen branches, rest them on trays or runners to avoid scratching surfaces.

Small pots of fresh herbs are a welcome and fragrant decorative element all year round. You can find them for a few bucks at Trader Joe’s (even in December) or in indoor sections of nurseries or home improvement stores. I put mine in small white pots and tuck them in trays full of ornaments.

Need a lot of decoration for very little money?

If you need lots of inexpensive ornaments in a hurry, make a large batch of gingerbread cookies. Choose a recipe without much leavening, or the cookies may be too soft. Cookies that rise a lot will get too large and lose their shape. Before baking, poke a hole one half inch from the top of each cookie to make hanging easier.

Once cookies are cooled, you can decorate them with royal icing—just make sure to let the icing harden overnight before hanging the cookies up so they don’t drip or smear. Better yet, don’t even ice the cookies. If they have fun shapes, they’ll be cute enough on their own.

Cookie decor is great for a party—you can have guests grab snacks right off the tree. But don’t leave cookies up for too long. After a while, kids, pets, rodents, and insects may also find them enticing! And make sure to use sturdy, well-baked cookies like gingerbread, not cookies that crumble easily, like shortbread or sugar cookies, or you’ll have a mess.

Fragrant Decor

Many people like to fill their homes with strongly scented candles, plug-in fragrance warmers, or fragrant oils in diffuser vases. However, these artificial fragrances can be overwhelming for people with allergies or chemical sensitivities. They can also battle with the inviting aromas of your foods and beverages. Indeed, avoid burning scented candles when you’re serving food so the cuisine is the star. Let your flavors stay true so they don’t fight with other scents.

A natural alternative with a less intense scent is a pomander. Pomanders are traditional decorations that go back many centuries. Though once primarily made of metal, more modest homemade orange-and-clover pomanders are better known today. To make them, just press whole cloves into oranges and let the fragrance diffuse naturally as the juices of the orange evaporate. Tie a ribbon around each orange to hang it on a tree or in a closet, or just pile them up in bowls and display them in your entryway, living room, bathroom, or wherever you want their festive scents to fill your home.

Decorate with Food

Trees full of cookies are one fun way to decorate with food. Or put out trays, plates, and bowls of cookies, candies, appetizers, or savory snacks on tables, sideboards, or islands. Mix in candles, or run a string of Christmas lights between containers to add light and sparkle.

Maybe you have vintage cut crystal, or Mom’s old pressed glass condiment dishes. These look pretty when clustered on a table and filled with treats. Fill some with candies and cookies, or savories like olives, deviled eggs, or spiced nuts. Then fill others with lit tea lights or votive candles.

Need some garlands? Strings of popped corn and fresh cranberries are a classic combo that looks good on any tree.

Keep food and drink safe

Is eating or drinking from old crystal safe? Yes, usually. Until the late 20th century, most crystal was made with lead, which makes it sparklier and heavier. Lead can leach into acidic foods or drinks if they’re left in a lead crystal vessel for too long. Using lead crystal glasses a few times a year is fine. Just don’t store acidic drinks like alcohol or lemonade in decanters for more than an evening. Leave decanters empty when they’re not in use. If drinks will be sitting for hours before they’re consumed, it’s best to keep them in lead-free glass.

As for food, it’s safe to eat dry foods like candies, cookies, and crackers out of lead crystal. Just avoid serving hot or acidic foods from lead crystal or from lead-glazed china.

Most porcelain and glazed pottery made before the 1970s has some lead in the glaze. Some older pieces, like those from Mexico or China, can have shockingly high amounts of lead in their glaze and should only be used as decoration.

If you want to use older dishes more than occasionally, or at all around children, buy a lead testing kit from a hardware store or online to make sure they’re lead-free. Such kits are cheap and will set your mind at ease.

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Colorful patchwork runners like this one made from Kaffe Fassett fabric make vibrant and eye-catching backdrops for trays, vases, or bowls filled with shimmering glass ornaments | Laura Grey