Table dressing for a festive feast

At Christmas time, if we’re not sitting around the tree, we are almost certainly sitting around the table; whether it’s the late night, after-dinner parlour games, those relaxed ‘breakfast-come-brunches’, or of course the main event! Your table should be a centrepiece for the season, suitably dressed in festive wares and always ready to entertain. So, dive into the bottom of your decoration box, have a good rustle around and get creative!

To start, you might want to decide on a colour scheme for your table. Look at the tableware and decorations you already own to avoid having to spend too much (on top everything else!) on buying everything new. You could go down a more traditional route with the reds, golds, whites, and greens or choose a quirkier, colourful scheme playing with pinks, blues, oranges, and yellows.

The base of your design is your tablecloth or runner. We had a small length of leftover fabric from a previous project and used it as a runner across our table. Next, we started arranging our tableware. We found these cute little heart plates from Tiger and thought they'd match our scheme perfectly. If you don't have decorative plates, not to worry, use any neutral plates you already have and fold a napkin in your chosen colour scheme on top, using your cutlery to hold it in place. The gold cutlery we’ve used is from Monsoon Home but there are lots of alternatives out there. Adding a charming bow, hand-tied with festive string is a great touch to really finish off the place setting – what’s more Christmassy than unwrapping your own cutlery?! Finally, polish-up the decorative glassware and make the table sparkle.

Now for the fun part, the centrepiece. We found some faux fir and ivy garlands in our decorations box, and used them as the base for our centrepiece design. Next, we’ve entwined some warm, battery powered string lights and made sure to conceal the ugly battery pack in the garlands. String lights like these will reflect off your bauble decorations and create a lovely festive glow. We'd recommend steering clear of colder blue lights as these tend to create a harsh/cold effect which won't create the right atmosphere for your cosy evening meal.

The next step is the decorations! Variation is key, try to use as many different shapes, sizes, and textures within your colour scheme as possible and don't be stingy, the more the merrier. We also incorporated some candle sticks into our centrepiece for some height and added some fun twisted candles from Tiger.

The statement piece for our table are these snowball lanterns which we've hung above our table. One pack contains 20 lanterns in a variety of sizes, and are light enough to be hung from the ceiling with a length of yarn. Again, variation is key, so hanging the lanterns at different heights will create that magical winter wonderland effect. For a big impact like the image above, use a whole pack or alternatively, use three or four for a subtler, more refined effect.

We hope you found our tips helpful! Please get in touch if you need any help with styling your tables this festive season.