EAST COAST INTERIOR DESIGNER OPENS IN HUDSON

Pamela Bayer Interiors Offers Tips For Seasonal Decorating

With the chill of winter and the cheer of the holidays swiftly approaching, the time we spend hibernating and entertaining indoors can be made merrier and brighter if you apply a few simple, affordable interior design strategies to liven up your space and celebrate the season.

Pamela Bayer of Pamela Bayer Interiors, an interior design and general contracting firm serving New York and New Jersey, and now, Akron and Cleveland, says welcoming the holidays can extend beyond just putting up a Christmas tree or some outdoor lights, for those that practice this tradition. “While time-honored holiday decorating rituals are the cornerstone of winter décor, there are a variety of ways you can spruce up your home for the season, and beyond,” says Bayer.

Bayer offers these room-by-room creative concepts for making the transition from fall fashions to an indoor winter wonderland that can carry the holiday spirit into the new year:

Dining Room and Kitchen

• Table scarves and runners—Use for dining, kitchen or occasional/side tables to add color, texture and variety.
• Centerpieces—Place seasonal fruit or vegetables in a tall glass vase and finish with pinecones or berry branches to bring height and dimension to your table. For a dinner party, accent each place setting with a small glass vase filled with cranberries and your favorite winter flowers. Guests will enjoy this event favor as a reminder of your hospitality and interior design savvy.

• Place settings—
-Add chargers under your dinner plates to offer
interest and visual appeal to a traditional place
setting. A charger is a decorative, oversized
plate [not meant for food] that accents your
regular dishes. Go bold with chargers that have
a vivid, artistic border of glass or inlaid stones.
-Select creative and original salad plates or
bowls to complement your dinnerware. Consider
a seasonal pattern or theme like a snowflake, or
a striking solid that carries the colors of winter,
such as deep green, burgundy, silver or gold.
-Stack your dinner plates on the chargers, and
the salad plates or bowls on the dinner plates.
Then, add your wine or water glasses to the
center of your arrangement, with your holiday
napkins and napkin rings vertically displayed
inside.

Living or Family Room

• Pillows, blankets and throws—Put away the fall-themed sofa and loveseat accents, and change-up your rooms with plush fabrics and colors that will keep you warm and comfortable on a snowy day in front of the TV.
• Window treatments—Weave a little joy into your curtains or shades with seasonal fabric swag enhancements; place a vine with berries on top of your valances to bring nature’s charm indoors. Berry vines are great for framing mirrors, too.
• Fireplace accents—Place a basket of pine cones next to your fireplace tools, or mix pine cones in with your Yule logs; position some pine cones across your mantel and add a few evergreen branches in between.
• Walls—Paint an accent wall with a bold hue that pulls out a secondary color of your décor. There’s probably no better way to infuse change and excitement into a room than with fresh paint. Get crazy and change the accent wall color every season! It can be a fun and relatively easy family project that becomes part of your holiday decorating agenda. And, you can apply this strategy anywhere in the house.

Bathrooms

• Shower curtain and rings—Out with the old, in with the new! If your current shower curtain is patterned, try a winter solid or a clear or semi-frosted design with a colorful liner. Take the opposite approach if your curtain is a solid, and don’t forget the matching rings.
• Towels—Switch from your regular hand and bath towels to holiday-inspired colors and designs; accent with a supply of paper hand napkins that harmonize with your new towels. Paper hand towels add color, and cut down on towel washing, and the spread of germs.
• Soaps and dispensers—Bring on the seasonal shapes, colors and scents for bar soap and substitute with a new liquid soap dispenser to match the rest of your winter bathroom theme.

Bedrooms

• Sheets and pillowcases—Replace silk or cotton with flannel, or just switch your sheet and pillow case colors and/or patterns to a cold weather concept.
• Duvet covers, accent pillows and shams—Carry the blueprint of the new season all the way through to these functional and decorative bedroom elements.
  

Anywhere/Everywhere

• Fresh winter flowers, like paperwhites and amaryllis.
• Dried flowers in baskets, such as hydrandreas.
• Home fragrances, winter candles and potpourri in cinnamon, pine, vanilla, apple and spice scents.
• Seasonally decorated picture frames.

Bayer notes that the vast majority of these products can be affordably purchased at retailers such as Pier 1, Linens ‘n Things, Bed Bath & Beyond and Target. Many of the non-disposable holiday decorating items can be recycled, so you won’t have to renew your investment annually.

For questions on holiday decorating, or any interior design subject, please email Pamela Bayer at pbayerinteriors@gmail.com.