Colour Schemes

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Snowbelle27

Santa's Elves
Oct 13, 2007
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West Midlands, UK.
Would just like to know how you all decide on colour schemes for your decorations? Do you stick to one colour scheme throughout the whole house or have different schemes for each room? Do you design each scheme to match your decor or just choose whatever you fancy at the time?

I love the traditional red and gold, but have refurbishing my home room by room and have gone for a more contemporary feel with with chrome and brushed stainless door furniture. I can't make my mind up if gold would clash and to replace it with silver or whether to just go with the gold anyway.

:globe:
 

coffeenut

Santa's Elves
Premiere Member
Oct 10, 2007
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Spartan Country-mi
For me it depends on what comes out in the stores. Last year I found some pretty light blue and silver poinesstas at one of our stores. So I ended up using blue, silver and white throughout the whole apartment. After Christmas last year I found a Dark green shower curtain, towels and accessories. Also at out party store I found some red and white snowmen. This year I am using red, green, and white as my colors. My kitchen will have red, green, and white peppermints.
I haven't always gone with a color scheme. It has only been the last few years that I have. I sort of have always used a theme.
I would test the gold and silver and see what you think :grin:
I have seen alot of contemporary ornaments at Hobby Lobby this year.
Hope this helps. :tree: :snow:
 

farmerswife

MHH Member
Oct 14, 2007
385
295
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Central Wisconsin
I like to match my decor, I use mainly naturals with lots of ribbons, so as I change my decor I change my ribbon, the only hard part is that many of the stores just sell what ever the color trend is for that year, it can be difficult to find what I am looking for say at walmart or target, as my decor follows my trend not the worlds. :smile:
~ Farmerswife
 

kmwiegand

Retire Member
Oct 13, 2007
19
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I too have a hard time finding the right decor to go with the color scheme (ok mostly lights - but still). We put up a TON of lights outside and we use a color scheme on them - but we seem to be ahead of the times as back when we did blue and white lights there were very few blue and white lights - you had to buy blue lights and white lights. Now we are Red, Green, and White - and there are no red green and white lights - we "make" our own strands of the big bulbs buy combining strands. Anyway, inside we have themes for areas - for example in my living / dining room on the front window the garland has red, green, and white lights to match the lights outside, the mantel has white lights to be more neutral, and the back window garland has blue and white lights as we run blue rope lights along our fence out back. We also put our fake ficus tree on that side of the room and add blue lights to it to match the garland (it always has white lights). In other rooms, we just kinda go with the flow. The basement media room gets a white tree with blue lights and blue, white, and silver ornaments. We bought two new trees on clearance last year, so this year we have to decide what to do with them - We are running out of room for trees!

kmwiegand
 

happyalice

MHH Member
Oct 16, 2007
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I try to make it so that each of the open areas don't clash, i.e. the living room and dining room are open to each other, so I want those trees to at least coordinate somewhat. Likewise with the family room and kitchen. The living room/dining rooms tend to be a little more fancy (all gold and clear decs), and the kitchen and family room are pretty casual with lots of red and green.

I tend to add a few new ornaments or decorations each year, last year it was all I could do to not buy a whole new tree's worth of those bronze ornaments that came out. I could picture those in a particular spare room in our home that has a quilt that would have matched perfectly. However, I was good. That's no promise for this year, tho! :D
 

Jingle Belle

MHH Member
Oct 15, 2007
140
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Snowbelle27, could you move your gold decorations to another room of the house and use silver in the rooms with the chrome/contemporary look?

I have gold and red in my kitchen/family room (open to each other). But I use silver in other rooms of my house. I do choose color schemes that work with the decor of the room. In fact, right now I want to repaint in my kitchen/family room and one thing I factor in is if my paint colors will work with the Christmas decor!

Happy Alice, I had the same problem last year. Saw a beautiful tree done in all browns and bronzes and almosts bought everything! It would have looked gorgeous in my front room!
 

java elf

Retire Member
Oct 15, 2007
50
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Ohio
tarachapman.blogspot.com
I found that I don't really veer from the traditional red and green, it's just different types of decor in different rooms. For example, our living/dining area has lots of sparkly silvery stuff amidst sparkly red and green stuff, wherease my kitchen decor tends to be more rustic, incorporating browns and coppers in with the red and green. I didn't do this on purpose. It just kind of happened after we moved into our new house. I looked at everything I had, spread it all out on the floor throughout our lliving area, and tried to match up the common color schemes, then just found places for everything in the different rooms. It worked out pretty well.

I'm excited about our second Christmas in this house because I'll have more direction this year since I know what worked last year. Besides that, I painted my kitchen green over the summer, and our living area is already tans and reds. So I feel like I"ll already have a leg-up on the decorating this year. Anyone remember the Home Alone house and how it was completely reds and greens? I love that!
 

HouseElf

MHH Member
Premiere Member
Oct 12, 2007
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Ontario, Canada
www.pinterest.com
My decorations did match our decor (creme and copper w/clear lights) however, DH and the boys did NOT like it. My DH said it "blended in" with everything in our home. We live in traditional red brick century home, but our tree will say "kids live here" :haha:

So we have switched to red, blue and green balls with a hodge-podge assortment of ornaments with mulit-coloured lights for the tree.

Outside did not change. Wreaths on doors and double windows (evergreen w/red bow), one LED "candle" in each window and icicle lights along the porch with lighted stars over the garage doors. I put seasonal evergreens and red dogwood twigs in the urns and window boxes, hanging silver lanterns where the summer hanging baskets where. :grin:
 

patteemom

Retire Member
Oct 15, 2007
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Idaho
I use red and green in the kitchen, because I use gingerbread men and beaded fruit in there. I have done blue and white, but I find myself turning toward deep reds and cream nowa days.
 

lovey195

Retire Member
Oct 12, 2007
484
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Island in the Sun
I am a traditional sort of girl (though some might say boring) but I love keeping it simple with red and white decorations with white lights on a green tree.
 

dejavu

Retire Member
Oct 22, 2007
98
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Chicago suburbs, Illinois
Most of my decorations are ancient! I don't think I've ever purged anything and I've been married and accumulating for 20 years!

I decorate my trees in loose themes. The living/dining room tree in the front window has all homemade ornaments on it. It is my favorite tree in the house. Every year I would pick one new type of ornament to make and my kids and I would make a batch for that year. I think we have about 12 years of different ornaments now. They are mostly the reds/greens/golds/white. That tree has white lights.

My back hall tree has every color imaginable filled with "breakable" ornaments. It has colored lights too and I run ribbons from top to bottom that are a deep sage green. The bottom half used to have the plastic balls till my youngest nieces and nephews were old enough for me to decorate the whole tree in the regular ornaments.

The family room has a small tabletop tree with ornaments the kids made at their schools and ornaments given to us from various people. It has an overall snowman influence.

Upstairs I have a small tree with blue and silver in the loft room.

My daughter stole my silver tree for her bedroom. She does whatever she wants with it.

I have purchased a ton of those photo frame ornaments in the past couple of years and have a goal of putting pictures of our extended families in each frame and having a "family" tree. Hopefully this is the year I get that done!!

I would do whatever you think is best with regards to the gold/silver decorating. I enjoy moving things from room to room for different years so maybe you'll try it one way this year, then decide on something different next year.
 

qltmrkt

Member
Premiere Member
After having the main tree in the living room the same for 10 years, I finally changed it up this past Christmas. Chartreuse was the hot color last year and I fell in love with it. So now the living room tree is chartreuse, red and cream. But since I had a hard time explaining to everyone what color chartreuse was, we now refer to it as "Grinch green". :haha: The living room is mostly khaki, cream and red the rest of the year so the colors fit in real well.

The other rooms pretty much fit in with the decor of the room. I don't have an open house so each room can pretty much stand alone without clashing. My DS(s) bedroom has a Clemson tree (the school they both go to). We've been collecting Clemson ornaments for 5 years along with orange Halloween lights (the school colors are orange and purple) and purple glass ornaments. The tree in the upstairs hallway is all the "leftover" ornaments....the ones the kids made when they were little, gift ornaments, etc. with colored lights. We have another tree in our bedroom with decorations that match our bedroom. The guest bathroom is all decorated in snowmen.

We don't have much outside decoration other than wreaths on each of the windows. We plan on putting a large front country porch on the front of the house (it just has a little covered stoop now) in the next few years so we are going to hold off on the outside until that is finished. But in the meantime I am collecting ideas. I really like the natural/Williamsburg look with pinecones, fruit and vegetables.