The story below is a preview from our November/December 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Make your home cozy and inviting year-round with simple tips on lighting, color, texture and styled vignettes.
For many of us, the holiday season is not just a time of parties, gifts, festive treats and spending time with loved ones — it’s also, crucially, Decorating Season.
I’m not just talking about trees and ornaments, either. Twinkle lights and wreaths are a given. And stockings? They’re just the tip of the mantelpiece iceberg.
If you’ve been bitten by the bug, you’re likely stringing cranberries and bubbling simmer pots for the entire month of December, filling every available vessel in the house with evergreen cuttings and holly. Every bare corner gets a nutcracker or snowglobe, and vibrant paper chains with velvet ribbons drape every doorway. The house is transformed by a warm, celebratory sense of joy, becoming the sort of warm, comforting space you want to settle into with a cup of cocoa, ready to wait out the winter.
I usually spend the full holiday season tinkering with my decor, right up through the day when it’s time to bid farewell to the Christmas-themed pieces and hunker down for January. But instead of the barren, sad look of a home recently stripped of all its cheer, I continue to cultivate the same feeling of comforting warmth, riding the momentum from another successful Decorating Season into the new year.
Though Decorating Season often comes during the last few months of the year, it isn’t limited to a single holiday — though it undoubtedly benefits from the boost from the seasonal spirit. Really, it’s about dialing up the cozy warmth of our living spaces, whether it’s by switching out our throw blankets and pillows, committing to candlelight in the dining room or stringing a sweet-smelling orange garland where the morning light will make it glow. It’s about seeing even the smallest surfaces of our home as opportunities for inviting details — a pair of antique brass starlings that were probably once paperweights, now propped against the kitchen door; a towering bundle of feathery ornamental grasses in a rose-cut glass pitcher, tucked into the corner of the powder room; a rattan desk lamp sitting on a stack of colorful cookbooks on one of the kitchen’s open shelves. Because here’s the secret: Treating every nook and cranny with the same attention as a dinner centerpiece is how we take our homes from comfortable and nice to intimate and memorable.
Creating a feeling of coziness in your home isn’t some sort of impossible magic that only comes at Christmas. In fact, all you need is a sense of play and attention to a few key details to keep that same feeling of homey cheer no matter — no matter the season.
So if you struggle with thinking of yourself as a decorator and you don’t want your home to look like it was visited by the Grinch on January 1, read on for my top tips for how to make your home as cozy and warm as a hug, all year long.
The basic formula: light, color, texture
When we think about a home that feels warm and inviting, we probably imagine softly-lit spaces with lots of cozy sitting areas, soft blankets and pillows to snuggle with and — whether we are aware of it or not — a harmonious blend of color that just makes us feel good to be around. If that sounds like a lot of elements, it definitely can be! But you can be as restrained or as abundant as you like to achieve the perfect vibe — as long as you use all three variables.
Lighting is the first step. One of the reasons the holidays always hit the perfect cozy mood is because a central part of their decor formula is — you guessed it — lighting! Candles and twinkle lights create a perfect warm, softly lit glow that makes everything it shines on look and feel better to be around. It’s the cornerstone of the magical mood that beckons us in, convincing us to slow down and stay awhile.
Every space benefits from multiple light sources, which are both practical and also aesthetically ideal. Overhead lights can be harsh and uneven, making even the best-decorated room look sterile or stark. So opt for floor and table lamps, and don’t be afraid to get what might feel like “too many.” The beauty of multiple light sources is that you don’t have to use them all at once! But different heights and different locations around a room are all opportunities to play with lighting, until you find the combination of lamps that hit the note you love most.
Want to learn how to use light, color and texture to make your home feel as warm and inviting all year as it does during the holiday season? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our November/December 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!