Christmas decorations don’t have to be complicated to be beautiful. We’re sharing our favorite easy Christmas decoration crafts, tips, tricks, and hacks that we use to decorate our home year after year. They work for EVERY budget, style, and space, and most of them utilize items you may already have around the house. Use these ideas to repurpose random leftover Christmas supplies like gift wraps, candy, wine corks, or pine cones. A lot of these are even fun Christmas crafts or DIY gifts you can make with family.
Whether you’re throwing an epic Christmas party or wedding, hosting a fun old-fashioned family Christmas, looking for easy DIY Christmas crafts to sell, or enjoying a quiet holiday in your small apartment–if you’ve taken on the task of decorating this year–we have you covered. You’re guaranteed to find at least one idea you can use and keep checking back because we update it every year!
1. Unique Christmas Decoration Ideas Beyond the Tree
Why should the tree have all the festive fun? Decorate your mantelpiece with a Christmas bauble garland and evergreen foliage, entwining the two, to create an opulent look. Bring the outside in with a vase full of seasonal greenery and red berries. Line up adorable felt robins, nutcracker soldiers, and snow-covered miniature Christmas trees to tap into childhood nostalgia and add light-up decorations for a warm and cozy glow. Reuse last year’s gift-wrapping ribbons to suspend vintage-inspired or novelty baubles to create a festive focal point.
2. Add atmosphere with home fragrance and candles
Fragrance can quickly and easily make your home feel festive. Christmas scents blend notes of mandarin, cinnamon, clove, frankincense, and myrrh for a luxuriously cozy ambiance. Our popular light-up candles combine snow-dusted scenes with twinkling LED lights to evoke the glow of a wintry log cabin. Place a reed diffuser in the hallway for a fragrant welcome. Burn scented candles in the living room for added warmth.
Get guest-ready by stocking up on taper candles to display in burnished candlesticks on the mantelpiece or dining table. Our home fragrance buying guide has more top tips on how to scent your home.
3. Set the scene
Mark the start of the season by hanging a festive wreath on your front door, whether you opt for something traditional, with festive foliage and bright red berries, or a contemporary light-up wire star wreath. Garlands of winter greenery, potted plants, and hurricane lanterns will add to the festive effect. Not just for doors, wreaths, and light-up decorations also look great on walls. Try hanging one above the mantelpiece or in a guest bedroom for an extra seasonal flourish.
4. Add impact with pops of color
One of the many wonderful things about decorating for Christmas is that there is a theme for everyone. Some people love to go all-out, while others prefer a slightly more subtle approach. The majority of us are probably somewhere in the middle, and there are so many ways to go middle of the road without sacrificing style. If you have a white color scheme, a few carefully considered pops of color will make all the difference in creating the perfect Christmas living room decor. Choose larger than-average cherry red baubles to punctuate the tree, filling gaps with white or clear decorations.
5. Embrace paper crafts for decorating
Paper crafts are a great way to involve the whole family, by making your paper decorations. Fun and budget-friendly homemade paper decorations can be used to finish off any Christmas decorating scheme. From tree toppers and stars to jazz up the mantelpiece, to playful honeycomb balls to place around the base while there are no presents. The possibilities with paper are endless. Paper chains, garlands, and more, there are plenty of ways to add a homemade touch to paper crafts.
6. Wrap up old boxes
You can wrap up old boxes with gift wrappers so it appears like an actual gift. Finish off the box wrapping with a signature bow.
Keep the wrapped-up boxes under the Christmas pine tree.
7. Banner
Create a banner using any material. Write a text on the material like Merry Christmas and add a rope to both ends of the banner.
Hoist up the banner in the front of the tree or at any strategic point in your home.
8. Create an easy bauble chandelier
Make your hanging decoration to go over a dining table or center stage in a hallway. Use an inexpensive plastic hula-hula hoop as your base, either spray-painting it or covering it with tape or string to conceal it. Then simply tie on a selection of colored Christmas baubles, arranged at staggered heights. Suspend from the ceiling with string or fishing wire.
9. Deck the stairs with sparkly baubles
Make the staircase the focal point of your hallway by festooning the banisters with a shimmering garland. A set of microlights wired into the garland will add extra sparkle, but instead of hanging baubles up the stairs, just a single swag at the end will add just as much impact. Just tie a few unbreakable baubles with lengths of satin ribbon and then loop over the end of the banister or around the newel post.
10. Make a cheap and cheerful Christmas wall-hanging
Create a super-easy wall hanging for a long hallway or corridor with a row of cheery gift-wrapped packages suspended from a rustic branch or pole. It makes a lovely way of displaying small gifts and pressies for the family and a great way of using up leftover gift wrap and ribbon remnants. Just suspend your branch or pole on a couple of sturdy wall hooks.
Read: 10 Fun Ideas for Christmas Home Decor