Candy-coloured hues stand-in for traditional red and green to ignite festive feelings and summery celebrations
The traditional green and red or frosted white and gold colours may call forth those Yuletide feelings and prompt the need to break into raucous rounds of carols, yet we can’t help but feel our summery Kiwi Christmas deserves something a little more bright, light and cheerful.
This year, the Your Home and Garden team channelled candy-coloured fancies and luscious curves to deck the halls, or should we say arches, of deputy editor Bea Taylor’s home. Armed with pastel pink, blue, and yellow, plus some popping shades of purple and green for contrast, boxes of honeycomb balls and a soft pink tree, a sweet Christmas ensued.
The Christmas table
Gift-giving aside, the best part of Christmas is gathering the family around the table and celebrating the holiday with a delicious feast.
Create a table that gets down to the business of celebration with a riot of colour and sweet treats. We used a soft mint green linen tablecloth as our starting point. Round white charger plates added elegant space for colourful glass plates to be layered on top. Bring a bit of depth in with darker coloured linen napkins and finish the tablescape off with bright baubles and honeycomb balls.
The Christmas tree
A colourful Christmas isn’t really complete without a colurful Christmas tree – and to put it simply, we’re tickled pink with this one from Spotlight.
In keeping with the bright and bold theme, blue, purple, pink and gold baubles, plus some twinkling seed lights, gave this soft, sweet hue some punchy attitude.
Pink and green is a colour match that promises to please, so if blue and purple baubles are not residents in your Christmas decoration box, shades of mint and sage green will make a stunning alternative.
Likewise, a tree decked out with tonal pink baubles in fruity shades of peach and raspberry will make an elegant statement.
If you have a penchant for florals, fill your tree with an abundance of fake flowers in similar colours.
Finally, the festive cherry on top – the Christmas tree topper. Candy-coloured flair deserves a statement topper to match – in this case, a glittery, gold peacock.
Full-on colour
Taking on a cheerfully colourful look for Christmas is a great way to dip your toe into embracing colour in your home,
it’s just for one month, after all.
We started our colour palette with the pink tree from Spotlight and the Armadillo Agra knot rug in moonstone from The Ivy House. These two subtle hues were a great base to then layer and carry brighter colours on top. More saturated blues, purples and pinks carried the colour palette along with pops of yellow and green. As the space was relatively neutral, going all out with colour was a feast for the eyes.
Holiday scenes
Taking a break from a more traditional nativity tableau, this year we were inspired by the beautiful flowers from Kensal to create a tableau of Christmas reindeer in a meadow.
If a fabulous retro niche is unavailable in your home, this setup also works well on a mantelpiece, in an empty fireplace or an open shelf. Simply gather up some garden foliage (pine needles or grasses will work best as they will dry out nicely), place a few bright blooms in small glass vases (hide these in the foliage so you can’t see them), and then place your deer family in position – we got ours from Shut The Front Door. Add a few gold baubles if you’re feeling particularly festive – a string of seed lights wouldn’t go amiss either.
Alternatively, fill your niche or decorate your mantelpiece with a big vase bursting with colourful florals (see previous page). Fill the remaining space with bright honeycomb balls and beautiful Christmas baubles.
Photography by: Belinda Merrie. Styling by: Kate Alexander
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