Cheerful, cosy decorating ideas to get you through the winter
Winter can be the most challenging season: dark nights, chilly weather and a long, long way to go until you can picnic, frolic and swim ‘til late again. Punctuated by festivity, true, winter can also be a lovely time, full of family and joyful glee. To make the most of the season and stave off the winter blues, it is particularly important that home feels like a sanctuary, a place to recover flagging spirits. Warm colours, inviting textures and thoughtful lighting are essential, and we can't get enough flickering candles and cheerful flowers. With this in mind, we've put together a few decorating tips to bring a little cheer (and cosiness) into your interiors.
**Planning your winter hibernation? Make your bedroom especially cosy with these design ideas from the archive. **
Lucas Allen1/14Cosify with cushions and throws
Come winter, you are likely less wont to leave your house. Adding cushions and throws, as Edward Bulmer has done in his Queen Anne house, gives a true sense of comfortability and cosiness to any space. Curl up under a warm cashmere blanket and sink into colourful, squashy cushions to escape the post-holiday winter blues.
Kristin Perers2/14Decorate with dried flowers
An ideal, simple way to add joy to a room is with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Of course, in winter, large, verdant bundles are rare; the flowers that can be found are either grown in far away places or fast-wilting, anaemic things. Dried flowers are the perfect solution to winter decoration. These bouquets add cheer and texture to a room and, if you arrange them yourself, allows for you to call upon your creativity (and use your favourite, harder-to-find florals).
Owen Gale3/14Candles, candles, candles
Even after the hustle and bustle of Christmas winds down, do keep the holiday's best decorative addition: candles. Not only do they instantly add a warm glow and gloriously cosy atmosphere to any room. Light the candelabra for a weeknight dinner or set the mood with a scented candle atop your bedside table – sure to bring instant cheer to any house.
Lauryn Ishak4/14Add more lamps
If you have a tendency to rely on ceiling lights, fight it! An array of decorative table lamps around a room, each emitting its own gentle light, is so much cosier (and more flattering!). Add a lampshade in a pretty pattern, and they perk up the room immeasurably as well as serving their essential function. We love how Elizabeth Hay has set a glazed red lamp against the deep blue walls of this Singapore apartment's bedroom, picking up a colour in Schumacher's ‘Citrus Garden’ fabric on the headboard.
Paul Massey5/14Decorate your ceiling
One way to bring a sense of enveloping comfort to a room is to decorate the ceiling. Painting it the same colour as the rest of the room or using the same wallpaper as the rest of the room can work wonders, especially in a small space. We really love this unusual painted ceiling from novelist Andrew O'Hagan's house, where the underside of the gallery over the kitchen was stencilled by the artist artist Tony Roche with designs drawn from the ceiling of the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi in Italy.
Paul Massey6/14Decorate with indoor bulbs
It's not the best time of the year for buying flowers, but indoor bulbs are a brilliant way to brighten up your interiors, and can easily be bought online and potted up ready to flower. 'Forced' bulbs are those which have been through cold treatments to trigger the flowering process - this is usually done in autumn, but you can buy prepared bulbs which will be ready to flower once planted at home. Try these white hyacinths from Crocus, or go for a beautiful kit with everything you need (including the bowl) from Wild Willow.
Owen Gale7/14Layer patterned textiles
Molly Mahon's colourful cottage in Sussex is filled with her own block-printed creations, which she layers to striking effect in every room in the house. Here in the sitting room, one of her rugs in a large pattern anchors the scheme, while prints at different scales appear on the ottoman, sofa and cushions. Now might be the time to reupholster a chair in a cheerful pattern to add texture and extra intrigue to an existing space.
Paul Massey8/14Revamp your bedding
Bed is a sanctuary right now, and it's worth making it particularly comfortable. Is your duvet warm and fluffy enough? Would you prefer a pretty eiderdown instead? Are your sheets and pillowcases soft and inviting, or are they looking a little threadbare? Get a great night's sleep with our guide to sprucing up your bedding, or take a peek at our recommendations for the best bedding out there.
Yuki Sugiura9/14Embrace chintz
As far as we're concerned, the blowsy florals of chintz fabrics and wallpapers never go out of style, and they're full of a kind of romantic English charm that is very reassuring. Whether you go small with a chintz cushion, medium with a bit of upholstery or a cabinet curtain (as Matilda Goad has done in the pantry of her London house), or full-on with a chintz wallpaper, it'll introduce a joyful summer mood into the chilliest of houses.
Maree Homer10/14Paint in warm colours
When you're spending all day indoors, white walls can start to feel a little sterile. Consider painting a room in a warm, enveloping colour instead. In this attic room in an Australian cottage by Lisa Burdus, the wood panelling has been painted in Dulux's ‘Alluvial Inca’. We also love Farrow & Ball's ‘India Yellow', a similar shade. It creates a really cosy space, but should however be used in moderation in small rooms where its intensity may be overwhelming.
Elsa Young11/14Rethink your curtains
Curtains and blinds naturally play a much larger role in winter than they do in summer - you're going to be looking at them all the time on dark nights! Make sure they're beautiful then, perhaps in a patterned fabric you love, and perhaps also that they're substantial enough to provide a warm layer between you and the outside world. In an Edinburgh flat designed by Susan Deliss, the bedroom curtains are in Robert Kime's 'Susani Red' linen. Says Susan: 'I like curtains to just brush the floor, especially if they are made from heavier weaves or silks. Softer fabrics look super puddled, but they pick up dirt and can get stuck in the vacuum cleaner. It’s often better to be practical than have something that looks nice but is hard to maintain.’ Susan is also known for her decorative linings: 'It pushes up the cost quite significantly, but it’s worth it – especially when the curtains are very obvious from the outside of the house.’
Michael Sinclair12/14Set up a reading nook
Have you got a bookcase? Have you got an armchair? Then you have all the ingredients necessary for a cosy reading nook. Leave your phone in the other room, extract a book from the shelf, maybe switch on a nearby floor lamp, and voila, the best way we can think of to spend a winter evening. The mood of your nook can easily be changed depending on the colour of your bookshelves - a dark moody colour creates an enveloping feel, or paint them in a bright red or yellow for a more uplifting atmosphere.
Charlie Porter13/14Create a lovely table setting
Whether you prefer mismatched vintage tableware or immaculately elegant matched settings, now is the time to take your dinner off the sofa and put some effort into laying the table. Set up the candlesticks, get out the napkins, and find yourself a lovely tablecloth. It'll make even the most basic of dinners a more cheerful event.
Alexander James14/14Make use of kilims and jajims
Kilims and jajims are part of a rich, centuries-old tradition of textile weaving in Turkey, Iran and Central Asia. With their warm colours and intricate designs, they add an effortless cosiness and richness to any space, and can be bought at a wide range of price points, depending on whether your budget is more Ikea or Robert Kime.
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