Make room for Christmas

At some point during the arrival of the Christmas tree, the sitting room becomes a negotiation. A chair moves towards the sofa. A lamp is unplugged. Someone holds back the lower branches while someone else insists there was definitely more space last year. The tree seemed a perfectly reasonable size when it was standing outside.

Once decorated, it changes more than the available floor space. Height, dark foliage and a hundred small reflections draw attention to one end of the room. A familiar armchair can suddenly look stranded; the lamp removed to make way for the stand turns out to have been doing a useful job. The temptation is to add more decorations elsewhere until everything feels equally festive. Often, what is missing is a better relationship between the tree and the room already there.

That relationship leaves plenty of room for exuberance. A generously decorated tree can sit beside patterned upholstery, old books and the paper angel with the bent wing. The work is in deciding where the abundance belongs, which colours connect it to the furnishings and what must remain usable when the visitors arrive.

Treat the tree as a temporary piece of furniture. Before buying one, check the width across its lower branches as well as its height, then allow for the stand and presents. Mark that footprint on the floor with a sheet or a few pieces of removable tape suitable for the surface. It is easier to discover that the armchair will be trapped before the tree is in its stand. A tall, slender tree can keep the sense of occasion while asking considerably less of a narrow room.

A corner is useful when it leaves the main route through the room intact. Beside a window, keep enough clearance for the curtains to close and enough visible glazing for daylight to reach the room. If the tree sits opposite a mirror, check the reflection from the sofa: doubling the sparkle can be lovely, but it may also make an already crowded corner feel busier. A corner that works in a photograph still has to allow a cupboard door to open and somebody to get past with a tray.

In a small flat, try the narrower tree before sacrificing a comfortable seat. Another option is a tabletop tree on a stable surface large enough for its stand, provided that surface is not the only useful table in the room. Give a smaller tree presence through a clear silhouette and a few well-spaced ornaments; covering every branch with oversized decorations can make it look bulky. Judge the result from the seat you actually use, including whether it interrupts the view of the television. December does not make the television disappear.

Look at the largest areas of colour first: sofa, curtains, walls and rug. They will still dominate the room once the ornament boxes are empty. Choose a thread that can travel between those furnishings and the tree, perhaps the burgundy in a cushion or the ochre in a rug. Repetition need not mean an exact match. Red velvet absorbs light; red glass catches it; a ribbon makes a small, clear stroke of colour against the needles. That difference in finish is what stops a related palette looking like a matching set.

Blue walls can take coppery orange, burgundy and old gold; pink makes a generous background for deep red and green branches. Pale timber and chalky paint leave room for scarlet, silver and coloured glass. Treat these as starting points, not instructions to replace the decorations you own. Hold a few against the tree in daylight, then switch on its lights and the room lamps. Translucent glass that looks quiet in the afternoon can become the brightest thing in the group after dark.

In the main room pictured here, green upholstery and shelving carry the foliage colour well beyond the tree, while red velvet and ribbon draw the eye back across the seating. The room feels connected without requiring a decoration on every surface. If your sofa is neutral, the same relationship can come from a cushion you already own, a bowl of clementines or a length of ribbon. Keep the wool blanket you reach for all winter. Its usefulness is a better reason to leave it out than whether it belongs to a Christmas palette.

There is a particular kind of decorated sofa that leaves very little room for sitting. Cushions occupy the corners, a throw covers the middle, and the approaching guest must decide which part of the arrangement they are allowed to disturb. Take a couple of cushions away. Leave the throw loose enough to pull over cold feet.

Let the seats face one another closely enough for an ordinary conversation. An armchair slightly turned towards the sofa helps a tree-filled corner remain part of the gathering, rather than a display everyone sits beside. Keep a clear way into that chair; turning it attractively is no help if its arm blocks the route. When borrowing extra seating, consider who will use it. A dining chair with a supportive back may suit a guest better than a low pouffe, especially for a long afternoon or when getting up is difficult.

Put a small table within reach of the seats that lack one. On the coffee table, gather the decorations onto a tray and leave the rest available for glasses, a plate of something good or the board game that will expose an unsuspected competitive streak. A tray is useful precisely because the whole display can move when the evening changes direction.

A full tree is more interesting when it has depth. Hang some smaller ornaments within the branches and leave favourite shapes clear near the tips, checking that each branch can carry what is on it. A bright piece glimpsed through foliage gives you something to notice after the first impression. Keep delicate paper and fabric decorations clear of light bulbs and follow the light maker’s placement guidance. A shelf is often a better place for the most delicate pieces.

Let other decorations form a few distinct groups: a row of little houses on a sideboard, a shallow bowl of heavy baubles, greenery along an unlit fireplace mantel. These groups need different scales to hold their own beside a tree. A single tiny ornament on a broad cabinet is easily lost; several together can register as one generous display. Leave space around the group so its outline is visible and the surface has some use left. There is no obligation to match the tree with another display of equal height at the opposite end of the room.

Before putting an old collection up, lay it out where you can see it. Two faded reds may find each other; wooden figures might make a small gathering away from the glass. This is a way of noticing what is already there, rather than imposing a rigid scheme. Put a favourite where it can be seen from a seat, not only from the ladder. Familiarity is part of the pleasure: the little object that catches your eye halfway through a film may matter more than the perfectly coordinated view from the door.

The school-made angel does not need to pass a colour-scheme test. Its bent wing and overambitious application of glitter belong to a particular year, and possibly a child who now considers the whole enterprise embarrassing. Put it somewhere good. The decorations left in the box can have their turn another Christmas.

Tree lights create small bright points; they rarely give the surrounding seats enough light for reading or conversation. If the rest of the room is dark, the tree can become a glaring island. Keep a shaded lamp near the seating and another further into the room so there is something for the eye to settle on beyond the branches. A lamp lighting a wall or a bookcase also reveals more of the room’s depth than another string of lights wound round the same tree.

Check the balance after dark from each main seat. A bare bulb reflected in a mirror can be uncomfortable even when the lamp looks attractive from the doorway; adjust the lamp’s position or shade so the bright source is screened. Let a mirror catch the decorated tree if you enjoy the effect, but check whether it also reflects a cable or an overfull corner. For reading, bring a suitable lamp close enough to light the page. The decorations should not cost someone their comfortable reading spot.

Warm white tree lights sit easily beside red, green and timber. Coloured lights can be just as good: small points of blue, pink and amber give familiar ornaments another character. Where possible, try the lights beside your usual lamps before dressing the whole tree. If one string looks stark beside everything else, changing that string is a smaller intervention than trying to warm up the entire room. In an adjoining dining room, a shaded lamp left on gives the view through the doorway a welcoming destination.

After the visitors leave, the room tells you which decisions worked. The tray moved easily when the game came out. There was somewhere for every cup. The borrowed chair stayed in the conversation, and nobody had to squeeze between the tree and the sofa. These are small successes, but they make the difference between a room that is festive to look at and one that carries a good evening.

The chair moved for the tree might even be nicer in its new position. A lamp could reveal a corner you had overlooked. Keep those discoveries for January; the decorations need not take every improvement with them when they go back into their boxes.

For now, leave the bent-winged angel where it can be seen, pull the blanket over your feet and put your glass on the table you kept within reach. You might stay a little longer than you intended.