Creating a Home for the Holidays
December 13th, 2023 | by Madison Stone
Pete & Co. – Creating a Home for the Holidays
We’d like to continue the theme of home and the holidays (which we introduced in our Thanksgiving post) by taking a look at curating a welcoming home.
This time of year is centered around home—we spend Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas morning, parties, planning, and everything in-between gathered in one home or another. Whether you spend it with yourself, your friends, your family, or a multitude of guests, it’s worth taking the time to create a welcoming space, one that reflects the warmth and care typical of this time of year.
Here are a few of our tips for curating a home fit for the holidays.
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Q: What are the easiest ways to create warmth in your home?
A: Choosing the right lighting is one of the easiest and most impactful ways to create warmth in a space. When choosing between cool and warm lighting, warm lighting, as the name suggests, is the more welcoming of the two.
Cool lighting (typically defined as 6,000+ K) is touted as being modern and clean, but it tends to add a more sterile and cold feeling to a room, especially when paired with straight lines, smooth textures, and hard surfaces.
Warm lighting (typically anything below 6,000 K) is known to be more soft and gentle, creating a more inviting glow than cool lighting. Everyone has their own ideas of what the perfect warm light is, but the general consensus is to stay between 2,400-2,700 K in living and lounging spaces.
Another way to make your home more comfortable is to ease harsh lines and hard surfaces. Modern homes tend to be clean and clean-cut, but leaning too much into that style can create a sterile and harsh environment (as when paired with cool lighting). However, preventing this can be as simple as using soft silhouettes in furniture and decor, like a curve in the back of a chair or an arched mirror, or adding plenty of textures through pillows, rugs, drapes, or greenery. Any piece or detail that undercuts some of the harshness in a space adds to its welcoming atmosphere.
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Q: How do you accommodate guests during the holidays?
A: Accommodating a guest in your own home can be a difficult task, especially if you have a custom home designed specifically for your family and your individual needs.
One way to make guests feel more comfortable and at-ease is to make sure they have easy access to the necessities. Hosts like to present a tidy house, and often that means putting away anything that is not immediately necessary, like blankets, towels, dishware, utensils, etc. It’s great to want your house to be presentable to guests, but a welcoming home is a lived-in one. Your spaces should be tidy without being too stiff or orchestrated. Drape extra blankets over chairs, or incorporate utensils and extra glasses into your decor. Keep magazines, books, and games out and in-reach. All it takes is a few little touches to add a lot of life into a home.
Q: How can you be a more thoughtful host?
A: Having guests in your home and actively taking on the role of host/hostess are two very different things. A thoughtful host goes beyond the basics of providing a space to gather by paying attention to the details. Curating smells, sounds, and spaces is the easiest way to take your hosting to the next level. Light a candle with a subtle scent. Switch out your normal soaps in the bathroom for fun, themed ones. Play soft music in the main areas to create steady white noise. Have a defined area for food and drink separate from an intimate, accessible seating area, even if it means adding or moving furniture. Giving thought to all the little details makes all the difference in the world.