Buying your first home is one of the most exciting times of your life. This new space that you call your own will be the center of so many memories and stories for the next several years of your life. Having your own home means creating your own dwelling place – decorating it as you like, inviting over whoever you want, and welcoming in any tradition that you see fit. As the holiday season rolls around, you may find yourself wondering how to decorate your new home for the holidays and make it feel as cozy as possible. Your new home is your new space to celebrate life however you want to celebrate it, after all! This post will give you some ideas and tips for decorating your new home for the holidays.
Scents
Decorations aren’t just about the looks; they are about the entire sensory experience that your home puts forth. If you want to decorate your new home to the max for the holidays this year, you need to consider each of the senses during your planning and decorating. The first of these senses is the sense of smell.
When you think about the holidays, there are probably several scents that come to mind. The list is honestly endless, and the following are just a few of the countless scents that tend to flood homes during the holiday period. There are the smells of foods, like freshly ground nutmeg, homemade pumpkin pie, recently baked cookies, and even spiraled ham straight from the oven. There are the smells of nature, like the aroma of pine that comes off of the Christmas tree, smells of flowers used to decorate the house, and the smell of crisp, cold air that wafts into your home. Then of course there are the smells that are traditionally used to freshen up a home, like vanilla, lavender, and fresh linen. All of these smells join together to play a vital role in the overall ambiance of your home during the holidays.
There are several ways that you can work these aromas into your home during the holiday season. First and foremost, you can create them naturally. Bringing home a Christmas tree, baking fresh cookies, and displaying vividly scented flowers are a few easy ways to do this. Additionally, you can utilize continuous air fresheners. Between plug-in air fresheners like Bath & Body Works Wallflowers and wax melting hotplates like Pink Zebra, there are plenty of different scents that can safely and continuous fill up the common spaces of your home. On top of all of that, candles make a great temporary addition to any room and are especially good at providing warm, comforting aromas.
Think About Your Color Theme
While the sense of smell is important in creating a well-rounded decorating plan, there is certainly no sense more important than that of sight. The things that are seen are the things that wind up in pictures, memories, and are the first impression that guests will have when visiting your home. For these reasons, the visual things are usually the first parts of the decorating scheme that homeowners consider.
There will be several points in this post about visual ideas and practices, but the first one to think about is the color scheme. The color scheme of your decorations is something that will carry over across every item, and the decisions you make about color scheme play a large role in the impression that your decorating scheme gives. One example of this is the visual temperature of your home. The colors that you choose to decorate with impact the moods that your guests feel and choosing warm colors or cool colors is one of the most direct examples. Warm colors, which are those that tend to fall on the reddish side of the color spectrum, make your home feel cozier and warmer, while cool colors, which are those that fall on the bluer side of the color spectrum, make your home feel cooler and less inviting. This is largely why deep reds and burgundies are such popular Christmas decoration colors; they make guests feel welcome and at home.
Another thing to think about is striking a balance between bright and muted tones. This does not mean that you need different colors perse, but rather that you find a proper balance between shades that pop and shades that blend in. By choosing too many bright colors, your decorating scheme may be visually overstimulating which dampens the overall impression of your living space. By choosing too many muted colors, you don’t really capitalize on your opportunity to make your living space pop and give it personality. A great example of this can be a Christmas tree. Fir trees themselves tend to be very dark and muted shades of green, and for this reason bright red decorations are such a perfect complement. The reds appear brighter and livelier than they would on a bright green tree, and the lighting is very well balanced. If you have a tree that is brighter in color than a traditional fir tree, you might consider using burgundy or dark red decorations to nicely complement the tree.
Take Advantage of Electronics
In the day and age that we live, there are so many different kinds of electronic devices at our disposal. While this can often be overwhelming, they can absolutely be used to your advantage when it comes to decorating your home for the holidays. Electronics can be used to visual purposes and for audial purposes.
When it comes to the sense of hearing, music is one of the best touches you can add to your decoration plan. While it may not immediately seem to be a decoration, music is something that truly complements the overall environment of your living space that you are decorating. Good visual decorations set the stage, but adding quality music is what really makes the show complete. Utilizing speakers to play music – whether they are through the TV or through a different speaker system – is an instant boost to any room. Music doesn’t need to be loud. Soft music in the background is almost a way to calm the subconscious and make your guests feel at home. Music has a heavy effect on mood, so playing soft orchestral music is great to calm a room while playing livelier toons can bring energy and enthusiasm.
Music isn’t the only advantage that electronic devices offer when it comes to decorating your home. Utilizing screens is actually a great way to create the environment that you want to offer to your guests. One very effective tactic is to use your TV as a virtual fireplace. Many homes do not have fireplaces, and while you can’t use a TV to replicate the heat of a fireplace, you can definitely use it to replicate the appearance and the sound of one. If you have a smart TV, you can go directly to the YouTube app or to YouTube on the browser to pull up a great virtual fireplace. There are videos that run for hours on end and are really quite nice. If you do not have a smart TV, you can simply connect any device you have – phone, laptop, tablet, etc. – to the TV via the HDMI port to have the same effect. On top of all of that, virtual photo frames are a nice way to display some of your favorite pictures without having to take up too much shelf or wall space. They can simply be put on loop and cycle throughout the day.
Yard and Exterior Decorations
Indoor decorations are very nice and have a great effect on helping people to get into the holiday spirit. However, outdoor decorations are the first thing that people see when they arrive at your home! Everyone always talks about how important first impressions are, and this is your chance to make a good one. Outdoor decorations, if you choose to use any, do not need to be very elaborate to have an effect. Doing something as simple as running Christmas lights along your gutter can do a fantastic job of giving your home an elegant facelift. If you desire to do even more than that, you have plenty of options. Yards are blank canvases, and you can really apply your own style to them to dress them up however you like. Some people like to use inflatable yard decor, while others stick to more minimal lighting and wreaths. What matters is just that you choose things that reflect on you and your own style. Elegant or playful, there is no wrong answer!
Fake decorations or live decorations?
One of the biggest arguments when it comes to holiday decorations is whether or not you should use real decorations or reusable plastic ones. This argument extends past just the Christmas tree, too. It includes garlands, flowers, wreaths, and more. There are advantages and disadvantages to both kinds of decorations, and the most heated argument of them all is that of the Christmas tree. Here is a quick breakdown of some of the advantages and disadvantages of using a real or a fake Christmas tree:
Advantages of Using a Real Christmas Tree:
Real Christmas trees are as traditional as it gets, and there is a reason so many people go out of their way to buy them. First and foremost, the smell that they bring into your home is so fresh and crisp. That fresh smell of pine is so closely intertwined with Christmas celebrations for a lot of people, and for this reason some people can’t even imagine the holidays without one. Another one of the key advantages is just the ability to go out and get one every year. While this is not very fun to some people, others use it as an important family tradition year after year.
The other main advantage of a real Christmas tree is just that you don’t need to store it when the holidays are over. While an artificial Christmas tree needs to get tucked away somewhere, a real Christmas tree gets discarded at the end of the season. Not everyone has a lot of excess storage space in their new home, and being tasked with storing a big item that you only use for one or two months out of the year is not very appealing to some people.
Disadvantages of Using a Real Christmas Tree:
While real Christmas trees can do a lot to put people into the holiday spirit, they have the complete opposite effect on some people. In fact, when it comes to raw numbers, there may be more disadvantages than advantages when it comes to getting a real Christmas tree. Firstly, they cost money – and a lot of it. Christmas trees can cost anywhere from fifty dollars for a small one to hundreds of dollars for a large one. Not everyone has this kind of cash sitting around, and it may be an expense that some people just deem unnecessary.
On top of that, going and getting a Christmas tree takes time and effort that some people don’t have or don’t feel like expending. Not everyone lives right next door to a Christmas tree farm, and the drive to the nearest one may be pretty far. That, plus the effort of trying to get the thing home, plus the effort of getting it inside is enough to deter some people.
As if all of that weren’t enough, some people actually dislike the smell of pine in the first place. While some people absolutely love it, others find it to be nauseating and really don’t want to be around it. If you don’t like the smell of pine, imagine having to constantly pick up pine needles that fall to the floor. That is especially important if you have pets, as they can be toxic to animals.
Advantages of Using a Fake Christmas Tree:
The advantages of using a fake Christmas tree are basically just the inverses of the disadvantages of using a real one. They are also very subjective, as some of the “disadvantages” of real trees, like the scent and the effort of buying one each year, aren’t disadvantages to everyone. Anyway, fake Christmas trees have no aroma. If you don’t like the smell of fresh pine, you’re in luck. They also are quite easy to attain – you can either run down to your local department store or you can even get one directly on Amazon. It’s amazing how well they condense to store, actually.
The one advantage of artificial Christmas trees is that they are significantly cheaper than real ones. While they are usually more expensive than a single real Christmas tree – often even double the price – they are a one-time expense that does not need to be repeated every year. Once the second year of having your artificial Christmas tree passes by, every year from there on out you save hundreds of dollars. If you are budget conscious and are indifferent between using a real Christmas tree and an artificial Christmas tree, this is the one thing that may make you lean one way over the other.
Thank you for reading our post about decorating your new home for the holidays for the first time. Hopefully this post offered you a little bit of insight or steered you in the right direction in some way toward creating your ideal decorating scheme for this holiday season. The most important piece of advice that can possibly go into this post is just that everyone has their own style and their own set of preferences. There is no perfect way to decorate your home, and really there is no right or wrong. Your home is your living space, and you have earned the right to decorate it however you want! Use this time to really express yourself and make yourself feel cozy. At the end of the day, it isn’t all about the guests – even if you are hosting a holiday dinner. It is your home, and what matters most is your own happiness and satisfaction within the confines of your own home.
If you visit Myrtle Beach or any other place in South Carolina and fall in love, we’re here to help. We at The Boyd Team are committed to helping you find the right property for your needs and dreams. Any question that you have about moving to the area and finding your dream home by the beach is our pleasure to answer. Feel free to send us an email at eddie@boydteam.com or text or call us at (843) 222-8566, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Being true natives of the Grand Strand and Horry County and with over 25 years of experience in the local real estate market, whether buying or selling, we can help you make your dreams a reality.
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Written by Zohra
