Lane Swaniawski
Decorate a white Christmas tree with oodles of color, paper snowflakes, chic ornaments, and vintage charm for a bright, festive look sure to make everyone smile! So when I decided to go with bold, colorful hues for my Christmas decor this year, I embraced it fully…right into the maximalist pastel palette of my dreams! Colorful Christmas decor just makes my heart sing and feels so merry and bright! Blush and hot pink mingle merrily with aqua, lime green, and Carolina blue for a modern twist on a vintage Christmas look.
But with my colorful palette chosen, I kept pondering how magnificent a white tree would look, and low and behold Providence put one in my path at a local sidewalk sale. After deciding to go full on color with vintage touches for my Christmas decor theme this season, I set about finding that key pattern to use as my inspiration and starting point.
While flipping through my William Morris pattern book I landed on a bold, colorful print that spoke to me in spades – blue pomegranate wallpaper from 1866! If you don’t know about Zazzle, go there now and get lost down the rabbit hole of merchandise that you can customize in just about any pattern your design scheming brain can imagine.
I ordered the pomegranate print in wrapping paper, satin ribbon, and gift tags.
Of course the first layer is lights, next comes a shimmery silver ribbon I wove in vertically, and then a glittered garland. The next level involves the tree picks, these are branches, florals, or other sculptural elements that stick out from the trunk. I purchased these giant white lacy snowflakes last year from World Market (sold out online, but these would work too) and couldn’t figure out where to use them in my Christmas decor this season because they are just too large for the scale of my house.
For the final layer my bold and colorful white Christmas tree got ribbon knot or pouf streamers and classic bead garland. Give the base of your Christmas tree a little love too with a pretty skirt and package display! I like to mix-up my wrapping paper patterns, using florals with stripes and plaids with polka dots for a festive mix. The drawback of decorating for Christmas in a bold, colorful palette with lots of pink is that it can look too girlish or like a candy shop exploded all over the living room. To keep it sophisticated and whimsical, I steered away from candy themed ornaments and decor as well as frilly things. Instead I played up a variety of textures and liberally paired the bright pastel colors with oodles of metallics.
