HOLIDAY DECORATING TRENDS

By Deb Barrett

The days are shorter, the nights longer — it's time to stop looking through that bare, black hole of a window and get it ready for the upcoming winter and holiday season!

Raise Your Room Temperature!
As the temperature drops outside, adding color, texture and window treatments will dramatically change a room from cool to warm and cozy. Adding panels and a top treatment can be just the thing to warm up a room (lined treatments act as an insulator). It's a perfect time to change out your existing window treatments with wood blinds or cellular shades — their insulating properties will keep rooms warmer all winter long (and cooler next summer!)

Soft Treatment Trends for the Winter Season

• French flip panels
• Unusual pleated headings on panels — inverted, goblets, cartridges, ruching
• Color-blocked columns of fabric
• Classic swags and cascades with dressmaker details

Holiday Decorating "Buzzwords"
You'll be hearing a lot about these holiday decorating trends as the season approaches!

• Warmth
  You'll be seeing a lot of the warm side of the color spectrum — sumptuous reds, oranges, pinks, honeys and yellows. Create distinctive color schemes for the holidays with one or more of these colors. Pinks and reds are perfect for a nostalgic or Rococo-themed holiday.
• Retro/Pop
  Op-art patterns, strong contrasts, graphic looks — the attitude that "The Future is Now!" Don't discount the classic looks as produced by the great couture houses — Chanel (tweeds and boucles), Pucci, Courréges, Mary Quant. Think back to the 50's and the flocked tree with pops of brilliant color for your inspiration. Retro/Pop looks work in traditional settings as a wonderful contrast that creates variety, making a room or window come to life.
• Shock
  The colors aren't new — clear, bright hues — but the interest is in the combination and schemes. Can't find the right fabric for your holiday window decorating scheme? Create your own! Alternate panels in "shocking" combinations like fuchsia and berry, or coffee bean and citrine, on multiple windows.
• Applied
  Layer design techniques and methods in the room and on the window. Layered, feminine, girly looks are window treatments hottest new trends!

It All Adds Up to Pretty Decorating!
Take a lesson from the fashion runway and consider tweeds, plaids and stripes mixed and matched in panels and top treatments.

Buy some of the fabulous new brooches and pin them on tab top panels or use as holdbacks — buy several and attach them all the way down the edge of stationary panels for a sparkling effect.

Add some of the wonderful, wired ribbons (found in the holiday decorating aisle) down the leading edge of your drape. Soften the edge with a ruffle in a fabulous silk or velvet. Just gather and finish the edge, then attach with double stick Velcro (so you can change it out at the end of the season).

Accessorize! Accessorize! Accessorize!
As you'd accessorize your outfit with shoes, bags and scarves, don't forget to add accessories to your room — they're a key ingredient to its design success.

• Complement your window treatments with pillows, runners, ottomans. Velvet throws with corded edges and tasseled corners in rich, dramatic colors are the perfect accessory for holiday. Think purple, berry, merlot, red.
• Dress up your existing draperies with swagged cording in an accent color or in one of the new metallics — silver, gold and copper — for holiday pizzazz. Change out your drapery rods in the same metals to reflect the romantic glow of candlelight at your dining table. A new pair of finials can change your room's whole perspective — simply and easily.
• When you're in the trim department, purchase an extra tassel or two for door knobs, to tie on a chair back, or wrap around a vase or candelabra. Remember to repeat an accent color or pattern at least three times for impact, and vary scale and size.
• Entertaining during the holidays? Buy some extra yardage when doing your windows and make 20" napkins for those special occasions.

A Simple Idea
Still have a bare window — and no time to treat it? Shop for some wonderful handcrafted Christmas ornaments and sumptuous drapery rods and brackets. Hang the ornaments from the rod with fish line in front of the glass. Choose ornaments that sparkle and reflect light both day and night!

My motto is "The More The Better" during the holiday season — using any or all of these ideas will make your home .. and windows — a holiday to remember.

Until next time! Deb

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