How Designers Decorate for Christmas
“I decorate boldly but affordably,” says Olivia Outred, whose Christmas staples include foraged ivy sprayed gold and silver. “We open up the box of old decorations, things we have been given or have made, which usually creates a joyful but rather chaotic look; loved by my daughter but slightly too mad for me. So I tweak it when she has gone to bed and remove some items that I think she won’t notice,” Olivia admits. “Then I use swathes of ribbon in just one colour, a deep orange this year, tied in bows around the branches. This gives me the look I want, and my daughter the look she wants too.”
Christmas is, after all, for children, Olivia says. “Any desire I had to have a genuinely grown-up approach to decorating has long gone, hence the desire for homemade ornaments and lots of greenery everywhere.” Another rather more unexpected decoration? “Pineapples! Sprayed gold they look absolutely incredible, and it’s a job a child can do outside, so we can all be busy and happy and take part in the madness of Christmas.”
