We have all poured over beautiful magazines and Instagram profiles. Scrolling through endless picture-perfect moment of seasonal decor that seems too good to be true. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably lost an hour or two, deep in thought, wishing that you too had the time and energy to decorate your home or revamp your wardrobe to reflect such timeless beauty.
Imagining moving those beautifully staged scenes off the pages of your magazines and applying them into your own home? Nautical summer beach themes, winter holiday scenes. The struggle is real ladies. It really is! Wouldn’t it be nice if it could all happen at the snap of your fingers? Well…it’s fun to dream right? The reality is though, who has the time to decorate like that? Sometimes I think that it must be the women who don’t work or don’t have kids, right? But as it turns out, that’s not always the truth…
What if I told you that there was a way to have a beautifully decorated home complete with seasonal decorations and even a seasonally inspired wardrobe? That no matter how busy you are, you can actually in just one weekend, reinvent yourself and your decor!
Keep reading and I will let you in on some of my little secrets on how to make this happen!
Seasonal Decor and How to Use it
Okay so let’s begin by debunking the notion that you need an extra five to ten hours a week to spend on decorating. Because, it’s simply not true. You don’t need to find a way to add hours to your day, you simply need one weekend of purging and reorganizing and the ability to keep an eye out for future deals.
First of all, you need to understand that seasonal decor is one of the easiest ways to change up your home decorations and your personal wardrobe. This basically involves keeping to a neutral palette and simply switching out colored accessories each season, in order to look and feel like a superstar!
How to Apply Seasonal Decor in Your Home
Begin with Your Favorites
Take a good look around your home and take inventory of all your favorite pieces in each room. It’s often beneficial to start with your favorite room and work down the list from there. Do you have a favorite chair or couch? Maybe a vase or artwork on the wall. Add them to your list because these will be the basis for determining your style and color choices.
Determine whether you prefer warm over cool colors. Are you a natural or bold pattern type? The answers to all these questions will help steer you in the right direction.
How to Apply the Current Fashions
It’s also important to remember that style and seasonal decor should still reflect who you are as a person despite the current trends. The best way to use trends and fashion is to find what works for you and apply it to your life. Don’t turn everything upside down for a trend but rather learn to incorporate small elements of these trends into your life.
Using Neutrals as a Base
Make sure each room has a neutral base with colors like white, cream and grey. Pick any combination of these neutrals that suits you best. Use these colors for all your big expensive pieces. Things like couches, tables, rugs, chairs, ottomans etc…Even wood furniture can follow this color plan. Dressers, display cases and built-ins can all be within the neutral range.
Accentuate with the Seasons
Some people mistake seasonal decor for holiday decor and while that can be incorporated if you wish, it doesn’t have to be. After all, not everyone celebrates the same holidays so it would presumptuous to expect decor to follow suite.
Traditionally though there are four distinct seasons. This may work well for you if you live in a climate that actually has all four seasons but again not everyone does. If you are in a more temperate climate, don’t fret-seasonal decor can still be achieved. Although perhaps you will want to think of representing two seasons instead of four.
The following colors are just examples and obviously you will want to make your choices based on your personal preferences. Choose two or three colors to represent the seasons. These will be the colors of all your accessories in each room. Make sure that these choices fit well within your neutral background but are still prominent.
The idea is for the accents to pop out and be visible immediately upon entering the room. These are colors that will tell you and your guests exactly what season you are incorporating. Work on creating a feeling rather than a look.
In the colder months, you will want a feeling of coziness and warmth. In warmer months, you should be aiming for a feeling of cool, fresh and brightness.
Definitely try and do this on your own so that your home reflects you and not someone else. However, if you are feeling stuck by all means you can get started with the following traditional seasonal colors.
- Winter: White, Silver, Cream, Gold, Grey, Navy Blue
- Fall: Brown, Rust, Orange, Mustard
- Spring: Green, Yellow, Sky Blue, Pink
- Summer: Magenta, Aqua, Emerald Green
Accessories for the Home
This is where you will create that’s seasonal feeling. These are items that are small enough to change around each season but important enough to hold space in each room. These items should only be purchased in the colors that we have established above (either these or your own) These are your accent colors that will represent each season and be obviously seasonal to any guests that enter your home.
When you are shopping, no matter how much you love an item, stop and check to see if it goes with your seasonal accent palette. If it does not, then you should really reconsider it. By sticking to only buying items that are either neutral or in your accent palette, you eliminate having a bunch of items that you can’t use. So don’t waste your time or money on anything that doesn’t match the colors you have previously chosen.
Small items that will have a great impact are things like the following:
- Pillows
- Throw Blankets
- Rugs
- Vases
- Candles
- Picture Frames
- Artwork
- Centerpieces
- Mugs and dishes
- Placemats and napkins
- Decorative Hand Towels
How to Apply Seasonal Decor to Your Wardrobe
Just like in the home, it is easiest to start with that neutral palette and then accessorize to represent the seasons and constantly changing trends. There are many online quizzes that will tell you if you are more of a cool color person or warm color person. And in fact, most of us don’t need a quizz to figure it out.
Simply look through a bunch of sweaters and you will instantly know what you are attracted to and what you dismiss easily. You will also want to choose your accent colors based on your hair color and skin tone. After all, baby blue may look great on your best friend and be a perfect spring color but it may look totally washed out on you. So be careful of trends when it comes to clothing and be sure that your choices are flattering on you.
Separate by Season
Then go through your wardrobe and try to separate all the items by season. Most likely you will find that you have two seasons worth of clothing. Most common being winter and summer. Again, starting with the most neutral palette possible is best. Black, white beige etc…And especially jeans are also a great neutral base item. Then you will want to choose two or three sets of accent colors -one for the colder months and the other for the warmer months.
If you really want to get fancy, you can coordinate these fashion accents with your home accents per season. Not necessary of course, but it does make for a really cohesive look when you open the door to your home and your clothing helps you to blend perfectly with your canvas.
Signature color
These two or three colors will be the ones for your accessories. It’s best to keep things simple and choose two or three colors that will represent your seasonal color.
Think of them as your signature colors of the season!
Accessories
Accessories are so much more than just jewelry. Accessories can be actual pieces of clothing that have your signature color. It’s just a matter of being creative!
- Sweater
- Scarf
- Jewelry
- Socks
- Bags and Purses
- Tank Tops (this work well with layering)
- Belts
- Wraps
- Coats
- Boots
All the above are great options to buy in your signature color of the season. Then pair one or two items at a time with the rest of your outfit being in your neutral tones.
How to Find Inspiration
Make a Pinterest Board
Whether it is for your home decor or your personal fashion style, Pinterest boards are the way to go. Think of it as seasonal inspiration right at your fingertips! Have a board for the home and another for fashion, then separate each into sub boards by season.
You are then free to add the neutrals and your signature colors per season. This enables you to always have a place to go for inspiration. And because of the magic of technology, this lovely little inspiration board will always be right in your phone as you shop! Making it easy to whip out and compare the items that have caught your eye to your boards.
Where to Purchase your Seasonal Items.
This is where mixing and matching comes in handy. Think shabby chic if you will! Yes, you can purchase quality items in the higher price range but you may also find unique one of a kind Etsy style pieces online. Really when it comes to deciding where to spend your money, the answer is simple. Splurge on quality neutral products and then buy cheaper accent color items.
After all, your accent colors will probably change over time and it would be a shame to not be able to change things up in your home. The same goes for your personal fashion. The accent colors that you like today, will not be the same one’s next year. Perhaps a new color will come out that you just adore or trends will drastically change and you now want boots with a wedge instead of a stiletto! So, think ahead and purchase wisely.
When it comes to decorating your home or your wardrobe, anyone can have a trendy, seasonal style that changes as the seasons do. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to freshen up your look and feel up to date. And it doesn’t have to take a lot of time or even a lot of money. A day or so of organization, a little Pinterest board of ideas and an eye for your signature accent colors is all it takes to have a little flair in your home and your closet!
Where do you get your inspiration? What are your tips and tricks for seasonal home decoration and a trendy wardrobe? Please feel free to share your ideas in the comments below!
A bientôt!
Karen
Hello, this is a really good post here. As a young lad, I knew all about seasonal decoration because my mum did change the decoration at home as the season changed. I suppose it was festive decoration to her though. Fast forward to now and I’m just a bachelor who has not decoration but I’m now looking to revamp that within me. So viola, I’m here on your site. This tips are really good and honestly I’ve been around the place looking at pictures but didn’t get good tips on what would fit in my taste. Coupled with the fact that I was thinking of all the stress if go through to redecorate. I’ll just get accessories and everything and fix a weekend now. My inspiration now is your tips. Thank you for this hint.
Hi Kenny, you’re welcome. I’m glad these tips gave you some inspiration!
I get my home decor inspiration from Houzz. In case you haven’t heard, it’s an online magazine and marketplace for interior designing and they offer a lot of home beauty tips even for those on the budget. I have a very busy schedule so I usually do my decoration twice a year – spring and autumn – by trying to fuse chic ideas that can last over 2 seasons at least.
It’s not like I have guests all the time and I am not too picky. I just decorate in such a way that feels right to my mood without overspending. It challenges my creative skills too so that’s something fun to do.
Hi Cathy, thanks for the tip about the online magazine. I live in Europe and didn’t know this one. I’ll check it out for sure! Have a great Sunday!
Very exhausting well written article this is. I like the discourse a lot because I am a neat freak and I love things being in order especially when it is in line with the events of the moment. However, as much as I like giving my home a styled fashion by following different trends or pictures, I also draw inspiration from visiting top gallery and fashion boutiques to get a clearer way of how their clothes are segmented and I try to replicate it at home.
Thanks for your comment. I get my inspiration from boutiques as well, I love window shopping and visualizing my options before buying anything. Have a great Sunday!
I do get my inspiration from visual platforms such as Instagram and maybe sometimes Pinterest but most of the time I get my inspiration from magazines. You can find some amazing and beautiful designs from magazines that I just wish I can transform into my own home.
Of course the ones that catches my eyes the most are the ones that would take a small fortune to make but now and then I come across some simple but nice designs that won’t cost so much. These are just some of the places I get inspiration on some beautiful home designs.
Hi Jay, that is a great source for inspiration of course. I know what you mean when you say that nice designs from the magazines cost a small fortune. This usually is my problem as well. My eyes always fall on the most expensive item 😉 But if you keep looking, from time to time you find something beautiful within your budget!