Thursday, December 23, 2010

Every Door Deserves A Holiday Wreath

No matter what the festival or season, a wreath on the door is a classic decoration. The fun in this ubiquitous decoration comes in choosing a wreath's materials and colors and even whether to replace the traditional round wreath with a graceful swag or loops of garlands.

While a traditional evergreen wreath is an excellent choice, many decorators overlook the potential and sheer variety available in wreaths. There are styles to suit every kind of architecture, interior decorating style and even landscape designs. Options range from a simple bare wreath made of grapevines to full green wreath of fir or pine bedecked with ribbons, bows and balls. The choice is up to the decorator but a few suggestions can assure having a personalized wreath that still fits nicely with a home's style. There are even outdoor rugs decorated with wreaths that can serve as welcome mats for the season.

Dried Fruit

A classic evergreen wreath is ideal for any home in a traditional architectural design. However, that timeless evergreen base can be decorated with any kind of embellishment, from tiny white lights to gaudy metallic balls to homespun artificial or dried fruit. Whether it is holly berries with ivy or silver tinsel, an evergreen wreath has the potential to be a stunningly personalized decoration.

Contemporary style homes can use evergreen wreaths as decorations both indoors and out, depending entirely upon the chosen embellishments. Homeowners with Contemporary or Modern design dwellings can choose to go with manmade materials, such as metallic tinsel wreaths or garlands, or even wreaths made of recycled or plastic components. Remember the silver tinsel trees with their rotating color wheels from the 1950s? That's a look that contemporary and modern homes can still carry off.

Homes in Cottage Country design have the benefit of a wide range of styles from which to choose for holiday decorating. Naturally Lodge or Rustic style homes can use the traditional evergreen wreath handsomely, while an English Cottage home would look lovely with a wreath made from dried hydrangeas adorned with a shimmering silver bow. For holiday color, pick hydrangeas while they are still green and enhance them with chartreuse glass balls. Pink hydrangeas can be picked and preserved to create one of the "pink Christmas" decorating themes that have become so popular in recent years. A pink rug just inside the door would make an ideal transition to the interior decorating theme.

Country Cottage homes in Southwestern style have a wonderful alternative in the classic chili pod decorations known as ristras. These swags of bright red piquin peppers dried and tied together, can last as long as five years if they're well maintained. Christmas wreaths made of chili pods are popular throughout the American Southwest, as are artificial lights shaped like chilis.

Innovative decorators sometimes opt for alternative or naturalistic wreaths no matter what the architectural style. Cuttings from native plants, fruit or seedpods all can be used to create unusual and striking wreaths. Wreaths of this kind often can be used throughout the fall and winter seasons, changing their adornments as the holidays come and go.

The last suggestion for using wreaths in home holiday decorating is think beyond the front door. Wreaths can be hung everywhere, from two vertically stacked on tall doors and windows to small wreaths for interior doors, doorknobs, stairways and even as Christmas tree ornaments. With such versatility, why stop at just one?

Every Door Deserves A Holiday Wreath

Design consultant Fran really enjoys writing about home decorating using wreaths at holiday time. And she says that if you want your room to make a statement without spending a fortune then all you need to is place outdoor rugs or oval rugs on your floor.

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