Whether you are feeling the peer pressure from your neighbors to deck out your home for the holidays or truly feeling festive, here are 6 simple holiday exterior décor tips that will look awesome and won’t cause cursing or injury.
1. Choose a Focal Point
Many homeowners choose their front porch or their front door as a focal point. Drawing attention to it with statement wreath enhanced with some red flare is a good place to start. Another option is to string lights around the railing and perhaps an artificial outdoor tree or two to draw the eye. Decorating your flowerbeds and other outdoor space around a central focal point can help you tie everything together and create a theme for your holiday décor. Think about choosing a theme for your holiday decor so everything flows together and you don’t end up buying more stuff than you need.
2. Keep It Simple
You don’t have to be all Clark Griswold with your Christmas lights. You want to be around to enjoy the holidays after all. Start smaller, especially if you’ve a newbie and never decorated the exterior of a home for the holidays before. Spend some time on Pinterest or Google Images to get holiday exterior decor ideas and start with a manageable display. For example, just string some lights around the porch or your windows instead of committing to your entire home might be a good place to start.
3. Be Economical and think Sustainability
Don’t let the holidays be about “all the things”. It is easy to buy holiday stuff on impulse. But here is a shocker, “You can live without it and you do not always have to buy brand new. There’s a more environmentally sustainable ways to get into the holiday spirit. Fortunately, you can score gently used, secondhand Christmas decorations at most thrift stores. Consider buying used and vintage wreaths, statues, nativity scenes and other items of holiday décor for a fraction of the retail price is not only easy on the pocketbook it helps the environment.
4.Play It Safe- They are just Holiday Light for Pete’s Sake
When it comes to outdoor holiday decorating safety is paramount. Use lights labeled with the UL (Underwriters Laboratories) seal of approval and make sure they’re rated for outdoor use. Not sure about getting up on the ladder to string lights along the gutters and around windows? Remember what happened to Clack Griswold. Don’t let peer pressure from the neighbors get the best of you. Hire someone to do it, or skip it altogether. There are other ways to make your home sparkle with putting your life in danger.
5. Start at the Bottom
When decorating something tall for Christmas, such as a large tree, start at the bottom and work your way up. Use a dowel rod staked into the soil to hold an extension cord for powering your lights, and work with the lights illuminated so you can get a better sense of how the finished product will look. Get help stringing the lights around the trunk of a deciduous tree, or zigzagging them through the branches of an evergreen, adding new strings as needed.
6. Decorate Smart- No need to be an Overachiever
Save yourself some effort and expense and only decorate parts of the yard that people will see. Have a big tree that passersby will only see one side of? Just decorate that side of the tree. Only you will know it is half naked. You may want to skip decorating parts of the yard that aren’t visible to the public; however, if you have a back patio or deck that you plan to use throughout the Christmas season, feel free to decorate it with weather-resistant garlands, artificial trees, wreaths, lights or table arrangements.
Decorating for the holidays doesn’t have to be a chore. With a little creativity and these helpful tips, you’ll soon have an outdoor display that neighborhood passersby will gawk at and hey you will have your health and ego in check too.
Happy Holidays!
From your Friends at JG Hause