Oh, the swearing while hanging this garland. Let’s avoid that for you.
Maybe you’re wondering how to decorate for Christmas in your first apartment. Maybe you’re newly married and can’t wait to trim your first tree with your spouse, but you aren’t sure what to buy first. Maybe you just moved houses and feel like you’re starting your decor from scratch.
If any of those situations are true, welcome. This post is just for you!
There are SO MANY product recommendations and creative ideas out there for Christmas decor. But there aren’t nearly as many posts about how to decorate for Christmas in a brand new space. How do you figure out what you want? How do you make it look nice? And how do you not spent an entire paycheck on it?
We’re going to answer those questions here. We’ll walk through how to decide what’s important to you in your holiday decorating, how to set your parameters, and how to choose decor that you’ll love for years to come. Plus, you’ll get to see our actual apartments through the years (without any social media filters, gifted items, or heck, even particularly good photography).
This process is thorough. You don’t have to follow it letter for letter. But your decor purchases won’t make you broke and your space might look a little better if you do.
Let’s get started!
How to decorate for Christmas in your first apartment: questions to ask yourself
What matters most to you in your christmas decor?
Is it not Christmas without a tree? Do you want sparkly lights on every surface? Are you searching for as many vintage pink ornaments as possible? This is super personal, and you get to be in charge.
If you aren’t sure, a little Pinterest inspiration board can go a long way. Search for Christmas decor (my favorite search terms are “vintage Christmas decor ideas” and “simple Christmas decor ideas” but change up those modifiers however suits your style) and pin whatever catches your eye. After you’ve collected at least 15 pins (more is even better), look at your board overall and see what trends you notice across your pins.
Here’s a little peek at my board. I’m clearly VERY into cozy lights and greenery, and most of the images I’m drawn to at the moment have white, brown, green, and maybe some burgundy or rust accents. Some of these images are relatively recent, but overall, these vibes have been pretty consistent since I’ve been decorating my own spaces. We’ve prioritized as we’ve built our Christmas decor collection.
What is your Christmas decorating budget?
Now you’ve got your inspiration. Time to come back to reality.
Before you buy every ornament that influencer linked on her LTK, get your limits in place. How much are you willing to spend on your Christmas decor?
There’s no right or wrong answer here (other than going into debt over holiday decor—I’m personally not comfortable with that option). But it is ideal to have this number in mind. It keeps you realistic and tells you where you’ll likely start looking for new items. Will you need everything to be free from your local Buy Nothing group? (Btw, if cash flow is tight this year, this is absolutely an option, and you might be surprised what people will pass along to you if you ask nicely.) Can you head to a thrift store or a Dollar Tree? Is there enough budgetary wiggle room for some pieces from Ikea and Target?
This step applies even if you have a Balsam Hill and Crate and Barrel budget, too. You likely can’t buy out the store’s entire inventory—you’re still going to have to know how much you’re willing to spend so you can prioritize wisely.
What are your Christmas decor storage limitations?
While we’re taking limits, let’s consider one more factor: your storage space.
Again, considering how much room you have to store this stuff (which you will for 10.5 months of the year) tells you what’s possible.
Do you have room for a single shoebox under your bed? Can you squeeze a cardboard box in your closet? Do you have space in a basement storage unit for two Rubbermaid totes? Can you beg someone to let you borrow a section of their basement utility room?
This space is your limit—unless you want Christmas decor lingering in your living spaces all year ‘round, you will ideally only buy what you have space for. Once the container is maxed out, you’ll need to stop.
The amount of storage space you have is likely going to change over your adulthood, so don’t lose hope if the answer isn’t ideal right now. When I was single and sharing apartments with roommates, I had room for one office paper-sized box of designated Christmas decor. For our first three years of marriage, we made room for two of those same boxes plus whatever flat-ish stuff we could add to the pile under our bed.
Now, we have a little more storage space, so we have three medium-sized totes plus a Christmas tree bag. My personal rule is that Adam and I have to be able to carry everything up from our basement storage unit to our apartment in one trip—we live in a third-floor walk-up, so more than one trek up those stairs will make me procrastinate decorating for weeks.
Are you prepared to grow your Christmas decor collection over time?
If you’re feeling glum about the limits you’ve set and how they’ll prevent you from living out your aesthetic Christmas dreams, please remember that you don’t have to buy everything this year. I repeat, you don’t have to buy everything this year. This is especially true if you’re decorating your first apartment or starting over in a brand-new space.
My personal preference for seasonal decor is to slowly build a collection of things I love and will want to use for years. Sure, my tastes might change, and I’m definitely down to swap out accessories and add a few new pieces each year to change things up. But if I’ve invested wisely in the things that matter to me, I’m hoping I’ll be making minor adjustments each year, not replacing my entire inventory annually because it no longer feels trendy.
Can I walk you through our Christmas tree progression to demonstrate?
For years, I didn’t have the budget or space for a full-sized Christmas tree. So when I was decorating for Christmas in my first apartments, I’d buy a miniature live tree from Trader Joe’s and trim it with fairy lights and mini ornaments from the deals section of Target. At the end of the season, we’d toss the tree, and the decorations fit in a small Ziplock bag. It worked just fine.
Eventually in 2020, we bought a fake pencil tree that’s skinnier (and less expensive) than the average fake tree – you can find them for between $50 and $75 at places like Home Depot. The year we bought the tree, we spent a chunk of our decor budget on the tree itself and didn’t have a ton left for ornaments, so we got a big multipack of gold ornaments from Ikea, $5 worth of gold pinecones from Target, and the least expensive lights I could find at Home Depot. That totally worked for two years, and I loved how everything looked.
Year three of owning the tree, I found some candle lights on sale after the holiday season and we added those to our collection. Year four (last year), I got inspired by downtown window displays and wanted a little more dimension, so I added some cool-shaped maroon ornaments from Amazon and some floral picks.
This year, year five, I’m feeling just about done with tree decoration purchases. The solitary new tree item I’m considering is pre-tied ribbon to tie around the candle lights. (I learned from last year, where I bought a spool of ribbon to do this and…never got around to learning how to tie pretty bows.)
This is a great place to be—I’m content with where I’m at, but I can easily (and inexpensively) change things out in the In the future. If I am suddenly drawn to a different color scheme, or I no longer like our loose “if the Gryffindor common room had a Christmas tree” theme, I can spend $20 on some more ribbon and find a few new accent ornaments. Easy peasy.
Have you decorated for the winter SEASON first?
Okay, so now that we have our boundaries in place and our feet firmly planted in reality, where do we begin with the actual decorating?
Even if you’re starting from scratch, I vote decorating for the winter season (yes, the whole three-month SEASON) first.
This tip comes from Myquillin Smith (the Nester) and her excellent book Welcome Home: A Cozy Minimalist Guide to Decorating and Hosting All Year Round (affiliate link). If you like this kind of post, you’d likely enjoy her book—I refer to it multiple times per year.
If you’d like to maximize your space and budget and don’t want your decor to feel like festive clutter, make sure that your home is generally ready for winter. What would set a cozy, wintery mood that you could leave up, use, or enjoy all season long? Myquillin recommends thinking about all of your senses here, not just what you can see. What smells, sounds, feels, and tastes like winter, too?
Here’s what we do to welcome winter every year:
- Store cozy throw blankets in an open basket
- Cover our couch throw pillows with cable knit, velvet, and plaid pillow covers (buying separate covers, not whole new pillows, means the covers fold flat for storage and are washable. Win-win.)
- Drape Ikea sheepskins over chairs and ottomans
- Burn citrus spice candles that feel fitting for the holidays but that I won’t be sick of in January
- Place battery-operated, dusk-activated candles in the windows
- Change up our book stacks and piles of display books to incorporate whatever colors I’m feeling
- Make toasty soup and homemade bread recipes (and ensure we have the supplies to easily do so)
- Stock our tea cabinet with cinnamon, vanilla, and orange spice teas
- Ready boots, hats, and gloves to easily grab on blustery days and move beach and outdoor stuff to a less accessible closet
Your list might look different, and you may not be able to get every candle, blanket, and snuggly pillow you’d like this year. That’s cool. Start with a just a few of the things that matter most to you, and build up your collection over time. I think you’ll be surprised what a difference even a few wintery pieces make and how nice it is to use these items for months instead of weeks. Plus, once your space is cozy-fied, you’ll probably need less holiday-specific decor than you think.
Where will you concentrate your holiday-specific decor?
Now—finally!—we’re to the actual holiday decorating section. But before you race to those enchanting aisles of holiday decor, it’s still helpful to have a plan for what exactly you’re going to buy and where you’re going to put it.
This a good time to revisit your pins. What caught your eye about the images you gathered? What do the holiday-specific items look like? What colors, textures, and sizes are they? How are they arranged?
I’m willing to bet a few things.
- Many of the items that caught your eye will be big—larger than a pineapple—not one small solo tchotchke on a side table
- If there are small items (like those little glowing white houses), there are a lot of them grouped together
- There’s a focal point involved—a mantle, a stair banister, a windowsill, a few open shelves, or a tabletop
There might be some other common themes among your pins. Note those, too.
Then make a plan. How would you take inspiration from what you’ve saved and translate it to your own space?
Note that the task here is not to exactly copy what you see. You don’t have the same house—and likely not the same decor budget or gifted items—as home influencers. But you can pull elements and inspiration from their space into yours.
Where should you put Christmas decorations in a small space?
If you’re trying to decide where exactly to add this decor, think about your room’s focal points—where does your eye first go when you walk in the room? What’s front and center, the most visible from the places where you spend the most time? Then direct as much of your budget as you can towards decor for those spots.
- Is your TV stand the center of attention in your living space? Maybe there’s some inspiration from mantles that you could borrow.
- Do you have a big window or sliding door that’s visible from everywhere in your apartment? Perhaps some of your inspiration pins that show decked-out windows, maybe with lighted garland or glowing paper stars.
- Do you have an empty corner that’s visible from multiple angles? Maybe your inspiration shows a gigantic Christmas tree, and you can hack it with a smaller one on a stool.
- Does your kitchen table take up a lot of your limited real estate? See if there are any tablescapes you can pull ideas from.
If you’re in very small apartment, you might only have one or two of these spots. Amazing! You won’t need a ton of stuff to have a high impact.
If you’re in a bigger space, or one with a lot of separate rooms, you may be able to identify more places. That’s also great! Just know that you don’t have to decorate every focal point you can identify. A few well-decorated spots with bigger items are usually more powerful than many kinda-decorated spots with smaller pieces.
How to make your budget Christmas decorations actually look good
Trust me on this – you’re going to have to buy bigger items than you think. (Thank you again to Myquillin Smith for tattooing this on my brain.)
If you’re inwardly protesting because you love little gnomes or snowmen or nutcrackers, don’t leave yet. I’m happy you’ve found something that brings you joy, and you don’t have to give them up.
But.
Go into your Hobby Lobby with realistic expectations about what, exactly, the little decor pieces can do for you. If you load up your cart with lots of cute tiny things, sprinkle them throughout your space, and expect to feel super festive, you might be disappointed.
The tiny things are cute accents. They’re fun to buy. But they usually can’t carry the weight of all of your Christmas decorating expectations.
Take a look at these examples from product photos to see what I mean.
Individually, the decor pieces in these photos are fine. But they’re small and don’t really catch your attention. Thus, whoever set up this shoot decided to pile on alllllllll the Christmas decor to make sure we know it’s Christmas in these fake homes. You might like some of the individual pieces here, but I’m guessing you probably don’t love how this all looks together.
Now, if you think you can’t afford any big stuff, I promise that it’s possible. Thrift store or Buy Nothing groups may have good offerings, or you can get creative. There are entire blogs and Youtube channels dedicated to these kinds of budget decor hacks. Just search “budget Christmas decor” or for diy versions of whatever you noticed on your pinboard, and you’ll find tons of ideas.
Here are two quick examples for two different styles of decor:
Do you have a Christmas decor shopping list?
We’re almost ready for the actual shopping. But before you grab your peppermint hot chocolate and head to the store, make sure you have a list of what you’d like to buy for what space written down. (You thought going into the grocery store without a list was bad—try walking into Hobby Lobby’s holiday section.)
This might sound like it will make decor shopping significantly less fun, but I can almost guarantee that shopping with a list will be less overwhelming. You don’t have to consider every single piece of decor on all of Amazon—you only have to consider the variations on, say, the gold candlesticks, or the 9-foot garlands.
You can make your list as specific as your personality allows. I love details, even down to the measurements I’d prefer, but “something gold and sparkly for the mantle” will work, too.
ready to decorate?
Have at it – you’ve earned it if you made it this far. Throw on some Mariah Carey and enjoy putting up some holiday cheer.
One last thing: do you have a place to write down notes To help you decorate for christmas next year
This is one of the most helpful things I do at the end of every holiday season. I have an ongoing note in my phone that tells me everything I want to remember about Christmas decor and planning for next year. It reminds me how many batteries I need for our window candles, what the name of the lingonberry jelly we found last year was, and what I’d like to buy for next year if I see an after-Christmas deal. I do this while packing up decor so everything is fresh in my mind, and I open the note again every November when I’m ready to start planning.
You can also write this on a piece of paper you keep in your Christmas decor bins—whatever you think you’ll remember and use.
I hope this helps how to decorate for Christmas in your first apartment (or any other home!) a little easier, and that your heart feels even warmer than your coziest blanket this holiday season.