This year I kept things calm and bright in the living room while still maintaining all the traditional Christmas coziness we love so much. Here’s my neutral traditional Christmas decor this year.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I didn’t make any huge changes this year with my Christmas decor compared to last year. When I was trying to find inspiration for this year’s decor plan, I just wasn’t finding anything that I loved more than last year’s mostly black and white color scheme. So I just went ahead and reused everything, and decided instead to focus on adding to my collection of “foundational” Christmas decor items – the things that I’ll use year after year and that will work with a color scheme or theme change whenever the mood strikes. Things like really good quality faux greenery that can mix in with the real stuff I always use, timeless lanterns, neutral cable knit stockings, things like that. What I ended up with is a space that feels calm and bright, but still very layered and cozy in a traditional kind of way. So let’s take a little tour. 🙂
Neutral Traditional Christmas Decor Ideas
For me, Christmas decor always starts with the greenery. It’s what I love most about decorating for Christmas and it’s always the part of my Christmas decor that goes up first. Honestly, once the greenery is up, I usually feel like I’ve done enough and don’t really want to add much more. I used a lot of fresh greenery, foraged from various areas around our property for our front porch and our mudroom this year, but in the living room I used a good combination of faux and real. We spend a lot of time in our living room, so I like the low-maintenance aspect of faux greenery in here and I also like that we don’t have to worry about bumping into the greenery and making a mess all over the room when it gets crispy.
After the greenery, I layered in pinecones in various size, some white berries, and velvet ribbon here and there in shades of black, white, and brown. And that’s about it.
Brown paper packages are always a favorite around here, clearly. 🙂
I bought these affordable stocking holders a couple of years ago from Amazon and I just love them. They work so well and I think they’re just so simple and elegant. The stockings themselves are also Amazon finds.
Pictured Above: Coffee Table | Marble-Topped Side Table | Black Block Print Pillow | Similar Frames | Cream Velvet Curtains | Lamps | Ruggable
Do you want to know a secret? The kids did almost all of the tree decorating themselves. I guess I have them trained well? 🙂 I just made a fresh bow tree topper with some wide black ribbon to tie in with all the other black accents around the room.
Pictured Above: Coffee Table | Round Marble Tray | Frasier Fir Candle | Similar Flocked Tree | Stockings | Stocking Holders | Ruggable | Black Block Print Pillow | Scarf (used as a throw) | Baskets | Similar Black Vase | This is Home Book | Sunday Suppers Book | The Kinfolk Table Book | Sweet Paris Book | Big Roll of Brown Kraft Paper | Sconces
My hope is that this post will be a little reminder to you that you have full permission to decorate however you want to decorate this season and in whatever way works for you this year. If it’s really simple and only takes you a few minutes and you don’t feel like doing any more after that, that’s fine. If it involves a weird black and white color scheme and maybe a few too many giant pinecones for one tiny room, that’s fine too. 🙂 It’s just one year, and it’s not about how it looks anyway, it’s about how it feels.
Merry Christmas, friends.
MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS
- Natural, Foraged Christmas Front Porch 2022
- Natural Cedar Christmas Decorations in the Mudroom
- DIY Foraged Christmas Door Swag
- How to Add Vertical Ribbon to a Christmas Tree
- The Creek Line House Christmas Archives
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.