Whether you are in a hotter climate or a classic winter, you can find ways to make your outdoor patio space feel just as festive as the indoors.
As Thanksgiving approaches, our thoughts turn to the upcoming holiday season — and immediately after Turkey Day the world shifts from warm-toned, orange hues to the classic reds, greens, and sparkle that indicates the Christmas season is upon us. Most Christmas decor is focused on the indoors; staircases, mantlepieces, etc.
Why not spruce up your outdoors with a little spruce tree, create an outdoor patio as cozy as a living room with a roaring fireplace, and decked out a Christmas tree? We’ve compiled a list of design ideas to help get you started on your journey to a winter wonderland regardless of the weather!
Stick to a Traditional Christmas Color Scheme
When piecing together the plan for your great outdoors, stick to the traditional color scheme of red, green, and white. Add in your favored metallic (gold or silver) in accents to complete the look. It might be time to retire your summer accessories and get fresh cushions for your chairs, lounge furniture, and sofas, and swap out those throw pillows.
Do not be afraid to go bold. It is the holidays, after all! Go for a red couch cushion and compliment the couch with a textured white pillow that is reminiscent of snowflakes and the magic of the season. Throw in a couple of green checkered or woven pillows to tie in the traditional look of the season. Grab an outdoor rug that helps make the colors pop, add a plaid throw blanket into the mix, and suddenly your outdoor seating is as cozy as the couch inside in front of the roaring fireplace.
Don’t Forget the Twinkle Lights
A staple in Christmas decor is the classic twinkle light. Not to be confused with the colorful Christmas lights put up on the front of houses, the twinkle light is more delicate, evoking the magic of a starry night in the dead of winter. Here at All American Outdoor Living, we can’t get enough of festive twinkle lights.
Get creative with where to hang the lights — wrap them around the base of your umbrella stand, for starters. But don’t stop there. Any support beams or columns on your patio are primed for twinkle lights. If you have an awning, line the edge of the awning with the lights. Hang them across the entire outdoor space, back and forth, creating a veritable night sky specific to your own backyard. (Think bistro lights but much smaller and much prettier.) Do the same underneath your umbrella and have a delightful mini sky. You could also take the twinkle lights one step further and add them to your garden.
Decorate Your Garden
Add twinkle lights throughout your garden, lining trees with them, weaving them through bushes and hedges, even laying them in the flower beds to create a sense of wonderment. And do not stop at just the lights — turn your garden, whether planted or potted, into replicas of your Christmas tree. Deck the garden with ornaments, tinsel, and tree toppers. If you have a lawn, find some Christmas gnomes and elves that can be sprinkled throughout the space.
If you live in a warmer climate and want to replicate the feeling of a white Christmas, go ahead and use a biodegradable flocking on your bushes and hedges. Treat your entire garden as if it is a Christmas tree. Whatever you put on your Christmas tree inside, try it outside in your new Christmas garden.
Have fun with turning your garden into a Christmas wonderland. If all you have are cacti to work with, treat them like a tree! Wrap lights around them, hang ornaments off of the needles and toss some tinsel over everything.
Bring All the Christmas Plants Outside
After turning your garden into a flatter, wider Christmas tree, go ahead and get some potted Christmas trees to accent your patio space. You can treat them the way you would any Christmas tree and decorate them until they are overflowing with Christmas spirit, or you can just leave them to be beautiful and bare, creating a verdant Christmas forest in your garden.
And you cannot forget to include the other Christmas classics! Poinsettia makes a beautiful, bright red, cheery accent to any space that adds that holiday pizazz. Little bushes of holly here and there add that extra ambiance and detail that makes space feel cohesively like Christmas. For an extra fun touch of romance, hang mistletoe any place that you can think of. Under the umbrella, any awnings or overhangs, and above any tucked away alcoves found in the garden. Make sure to include lighting so that no one misses their chance!
Add More Warmth with Lanterns and Candles
Get moody with your use of candles outside to increase holiday cheer and atmosphere. Grab some lanterns of varying sizes and fill them with electric wax candles. Some of the candles available today have realistic-looking wicks and timer settings so that they automatically turn on at the same time every evening. Set them up on all the tables and counters, as well as on the ground around the patio.
Mix and match the lanterns around the space, using odd numbers in each cluster to create balance. You can never have too many lights, so do not be afraid of overdoing it. Allow for the lanterns to create enough warm light that your outdoor space is filled without turning the outdoor lights on. With the candles in lanterns and twinkle lights hung throughout your patio and garden, space will take on an otherworldly Christmas charm akin to what you see in films.
Create a Christmas Tablescape to Rival Your Dining Room
Do not hesitate to outdo your indoor dining room here. Imagine a deep, dark wooden table such as the Farmhouse Dining Table, with garlands of deep green fir offset by red berries and candles flickering. Or even mixing in the twinkle lights through the garland. Golden or silver charger plates can simultaneously blend into the scenery and help a festive red or green plate pop against the dark wood. Allow your imagination to run away with you. The safe-for-outdoors melamine dinner and drinkware available today has reached new decorative heights; to the point that you are guaranteed to find something that meets your tastes and sophistication.
Have Christmas Themed Treats Ready to Go
Not all Christmas treats are equal! At All American Outdoor Living, we can’t get enough of treats with a holiday twist. As the outdoor and patio experts, we brought you our favorite outdoor treats with a Halloween twist and now we are bringing you our top convenient outdoor treats made for the perfect holiday season. And having them prepped for popping out at a moment’s notice can be as easy as one, two, three.
The easiest and most reminiscent of Christmas is the chestnut. Grab some chestnuts from the store to have on hand, and whenever you feel like living the classic song, throw some in a cast iron pan and pop it onto your grill or fire pit (if you are extremely bold!). About ten minutes later and you have delicious, buttery, roasted chestnuts.
An outdoor staple in the world of treats is the S’more, which also happens to have the longest shelf-life; ideal when you want something easy to pull out of the pantry and throw together. But here we add in something slightly different — peppermint bark. Instead of the traditional Hershey’s bar, we take a chunk of dark chocolate or white chocolate peppermint bark and complete our peppermint s’ more in true Christmas fashion.
Another quick and jolly option is the hot chocolate ball. Coming in flavors rich in holiday spirits such as caramel and peppermint, there can be a variety on hand to satisfy everyone’s desires. Just throw a kettle on with milk, pour it over the ball in a mug, and watch the mini marshmallows appear in the perfect cup of hot chocolate. Fun, fast, and effortless! Our favorite variation on the hot chocolate ball is to heat eggnog instead of regular milk, amplifying the cozy Christmas factor.
The Pièce De Résistance for the Perfect Outdoor Christmas: The Fire Pit
Add an outdoor fire pit to your seating area to take your patio to the next and final level for the perfect outdoor Christmas. With your upgraded and holiday focused cushions and seating, the fire pit takes the place of the indoor fireplace, elevating your newly decorated wonderland garden and patio into the new living room. It becomes the gathering point for family and friends, to warm themselves while enjoying each other’s company.
There is nothing cozier than a night spent enjoying your outdoor furniture, under the twinkly lights, and surrounded by warm candlelight, with a peppermint hot chocolate in hand, the smell of freshly roasted chestnuts hovering in the air, chatting with loved ones around an open fire.