The dining table takes centre stage in many homes during the festive season, so you’ll want to ensure that it looks its best for your Christmas dinner or Christmas party. Having a coordinated theme or colour scheme can help you match all of your decorations throughout your home. Oftentimes it is the little touches in the decorations that make all the difference, like fairy lights and candles.
A table centrepiece is key for a Christmas tablescape. These include decorations such as a vase and a bunch of your favourite seasonal flowers, or perhaps a Christmas garland entwined with fairy lights. It may help to choose a centrepiece first to help you build on your theme. Whether you want something simple, traditional, or big, bold and beautiful, here are 8 Christmas table decoration ideas to inspire you.
1. Embrace Colour
While you might use the red and green colour combination for decorating during the festive season, your table can have a twist. You could try shades of blue, pink and lilac to make things more lively.
Along with your vibrant colours, you can use festive crockery, coloured glassware, and colourful crackers. Use bright coloured ribbon to hang decorations from the backs of your chairs to complete the table.
2. Winter Wonderland
If your theme is a winter wonderland in summer, you can start with a crisp white tablecloth and add a festive table runner decorated with a snowflake design. Place a snow-dusted garland along the length of your table with some potted succulents and star-shaped snack bowls. Use silver-rimmed grocery at each setting with white napkins, silver cutlery, and elegant wine glasses.
3. Gift Boxes
A nice gesture to add to your place settings may be adding hand-picked gifts or treats for your family and friends. The gift can be placed inside a mini brown paper box tied with a white ribbon, and topped with a sprig of pine cones and cinnamon sticks that will add a Christmasy scent to the table.
4. Candles
Add brightness and colour to the table by incorporating red or white candles of any shape or size; they will add to your table decorations by providing some light as well as pleasant scents.
You can set bare candles on the table or place them in glass jars. Candles will look perfect next to or spread out amongst the other decorations. Just be sure that napkins and greenery aren’t too close to cause a potential fire hazard.
5. Garland
Christmas garland can be used in many ways around Christmas time. It can be wrapped around doorways, used on a fireplace mantle, and even used on the dining table.
If you don’t want a tablecloth or runner, choose a long piece of garland and lay it down in the middle of the table. It can act as a runner on its own and spruced up with pinecones, cranberries and other decorative elements.
6. Mason Jars
A nice way to add colour without it being too much or forced is through mason jars. Mason jars are simply a great piece of decor with lots of space for you to add things inside.
Use multiple mason jars and choose different accents to fill in each. For instance, you could use red cranberries to fill the bottom of the jar, then fill it with green pine needles. You could even fill a mason jar with small ornament bulbs to bring in more colours.
Or why not try adding fairy lights to a jar for a mesmerising effect? An empty mason jar is the ideal canvas for so many beautiful Christmas artworks.
7. Centrepieces
You can add more Christmas decor to your table with a tray as a centrepiece. The tray can then be filled with a large candle and some evergreen branches, holly berries, and ornaments. Make the centrepiece more interesting with different shapes, sizes and textures. Another simple idea is to fill up your tray with sparkly ornaments that will match your decor.
8. Layer Place Settings
Using a bunch of layers can help to make your table setting feel luxurious and festive. You’ll want to place down table mats that match your decor before laying the table with cutlery, crockery, utensils and glassware.
Setting The Table
Some things to remember when setting the table:
- Cutlery is always placed on the outside left and right sides of the placemat, working your way towards the plate. Forks should be placed on the left of the plate, and knives and spoons on the right. Stemware is placed above and to the right of the plate, and bread and butter plates sit above the forks on the left.
- Cutlery or flatware should always be in line with the bottom of the charger plate – the big plate that the other plates are stacked on top of.
- The glass of water should be above the dinner knife, with the white wine glass to its right, and the red wine top centre.
- You can add place cards so people know where to sit at the table, or you can direct them to their chairs.
- You can also add champagne glasses if there are going to be toasts; they should be placed furthest to the right to enable your guest to easily reach and raise their glass.
- Before dessert, you can set dessert plates on the table. There should be a dessert spoon and cake fork at the top of the setting. The fork should face the right with the spoon facing left.
Conclusion
We hope that you found these tips useful and got some inspiration on Christmas table decoration ideas to add to your setting. If you have trouble choosing one Christmas table idea, then you can always combine a few of them for an interesting holiday combination. Of course, the most important thing is to relax and enjoy the company of your loved ones.
If you need some help getting your home for the festive period, book a home clean service with SweepSouth so you can focus on decorating your home or planning your Christmas party.
