It’s the most wonderful time of the year! 

The holiday season is such a lovely time of year. Glittering lights on every corner, cozy hues of red and green, fresh-baked cookies and warm hot cocoa… I love the coziness, the joy, and the warm memories that the holidays usher in. As the holiday season approaches, I think of all of the wonderful memories my family has made in our home since finishing it in 2019.

Growing up, I lived in a lot of homes that were uncomfortable or poorly designed. This has made me appreciate having a well-designed, beautiful, functional home today. Especially during this time of year, I’m thankful that my family has a space where we can foster community with our friends, extended family, and neighbors! 

If you’re like me and love the sense of togetherness that comes with the Christmas season, then you’ll want to make sure your home is the perfect place to celebrate! A wonderful holiday season starts with being able to decorate to your heart’s content. Then, in such a pretty home, you’ll want to host the most fantastic holiday gatherings with friends and family. Afterwards, you’ll need tohave somewhere to store all of your decorations year-round. 

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Simple Ways to Add Value and Charm to your Home

In this blog, I want to share with you ways that your home design decisions can make your life easier during the holiday season! 

The Importance of Intentional Home Design

While we’re going to specifically talk about holiday home design considerations in this blog, I want to stress to you the general importance of intentional home design. 

For people who have never built a home before, the effect of home design on everyday life probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. How can it be, as long as you have all of the basic rooms and you like how it looks? 

I’m here to break the news to you: Your home design actually can have a HUGE impact on the quality of your life. From your emotional well-being to your physical health, home design can either help or hinder your day-to-day life in huge ways. 

For example, the layout of your home can change how accessible it is. For those who are less able-bodied, your home design can be the difference between them being able to visit or not. Additionally, as you age, you never know how your mobility can change. Universal Design and Aging In Place are design considerations that take these sorts of life changes into account before you finish the building process! 

Additionally, there are ways your home’s design can improve your family’s health and wellness right now! For example, south-facing windows allow your home to get plenty of natural light, sneaky storage spots allow busy families to stay tidy, and welcoming communal spaces help foster a sense of belonging and togetherness in the family. 

For more general home design considerations for your home, check out our blog post all about it! Read on for specific tips on how to apply these concepts during the Christmas season.

Home Design Tips for the Holidays

When designing and building your home, there are three main categories to think about when making intentional holiday considerations: decorating, hosting, and storage. Let’s unpack those! 

Decorating 

Does anyone else think decorating is one of the most fun parts of the holiday season? I just love all of the warm hues, the twinkling lights, and the coziness. Plus, decorating for Christmas is a wonderful opportunity to spend quality time with your spouse and kids! 

However, decorating can become more of a chore than an enjoyment if you don’t plan properly beforehand. If you don’t plan ahead before the holiday season, you might find yourself stressed and struggling more than enjoying the decoration process. Here are some things for you to consider as you build a new home 

Think about where to put your Christmas tree

The layout of your living room will determine where your furniture will go, and your furniture choices impact your options for where your Christmas tree will go! Choose a floor plan with a spacious living room to ensure you can make space for the tree. 

Make sure you have enough outlets for lights 

A simple stand of lights can go a long way when it comes to bringing Christmas magic into your home! Will your build have enough outlets for all of your lights, and will they be in the right places? 

When choosing spots for outlets, think about placing them: 

• Close to where you’ll put up the tree
• At the top and bottom of the stairs, if you want to string lights into your garland
• On eaves, so you can easily hang exterior lights around your home
• By the front door for lighted garland, wreathes, or pre-lit trees
• On top of the garland, for mantleplace decorations

You can always use extension cords to string lights into harder-to-reach places, but these cords are unsightly and hard to hide. Having enough outlets throughout your home allows you to add a warm twinkle to any area!

Consider if/where you’ll hang stockings 

Does your family open stockings on Christmas? Everyone has the traditional image of stockings hanging from the mantle of the fireplace. If this evokes feelings of holiday joy for you, include a fireplace in your home to hang your stockings from. 

If you don’t plan on having a fireplace in your new home, no need to stress! There are alternative places to hang your stockings that are easily accessible and stunning. One of my favorite options is to hang them along the banister of your staircase. Your stockings will not only be easily accessible from there, but they will look like intentional decor pieces.

An alternative I’ve seen is using the pegs of a wall-hanging hook rack. This option is fantastic because you can keep the rack up year-round and use it for coats and keys!

Hosting 

With your new, well-designed, beautifully decorated home, you’ll want to host holiday parties with friends and family. After all, we believe that’s what “home” is all about – fostering togetherness and cultivating connection with friends, family, and neighbors. 

If you want to build a home that’s well-suited for hosting, think about where your guests will mingle, where they’ll eat, and where they’ll sleep if they overnight. Even outside of the holiday season, it’s important for you to consider how your home design will affect your ability to create a warm, welcoming environment for the people you love. Here are some of the things we think are most important to think about: 

Space for entertaining 

When you have guests over, do you have space for them to sit and mingle comfortably? Make sure that your formal gathering space is spacious enough for multiple people at a time. 

Additionally, consider having more than one space in your home for gathering. Such spaces could include a game room, an upstairs loft, or even a closed-in patio space. Having multiple gathering spaces in your home allows multiple activities to happen at the same time – for example, the adults can have a conversation in the living room while the kids play in the game room. This prevents people from getting bored and claustrophobic in your home!

Dining space 

These days, most people don’t want a formal dining room in their home. These rooms can sometimes feel stuffy and uptight, which can add unnecessary pressure to mealtime. Also, why would you want to waste square footage on a room you may use once or twice a year?!

However, you do want to make sure you can comfortably seat all of your guests when you host. What do you do, then? 

We recommend making your regular dining space easily convertible for when you host. For example, you can find a really nice dining table with a removable leaf, which allows you to extend the length of the table. 

While you can find some really nice dining tables at big box retailers, I never like to pay full price for anything if I can avoid it! With Thanksgiving right around the corner, now is the perfect time to keep an eye out for holiday discounts

Additionally, you can utilize other areas of your home as dining spaces. For example, a lot of our floor plans include a front porch, a screened porch, a patio, and some even have all three! I know what you might be thinking: “Outdoor dining in the wintertime?!” However, you can invest in patio heaters for these spaces, making for a cozy outdoor dining experience. 

Sleeping arrangements 

For a lot of families, the holidays are a time for extended family to get together. This might mean that people travel across the country or even the world to be in your home for Thanksgiving or Christmas! 

Even if this isn’t your situation right now, you never know what might change. Your friends and family could move for a variety of reasons. When they come back to visit, you’ll want to have a comfortable space for them at your house! 

The most obvious and conventional solution is having a dedicated guest room. However, here at The Old Barn, we love getting more use out of less space! We love the idea of using a room for more than one purpose. 

In this case, your home office could double as a guest room. Murphey beds are a fantastic way to turn your office into a guest room. When they are not in use, they fold up into simple and stylish cabinets. Some Murphey beds even have extra storage space, which further utilizes every square inch of space in your home!

Additionally, day beds are a stylish but functional way to add a spot for guests to sleep in your home. These beds look like couches, which makes them a fun hangout spot in the office when not being slept in. 

Storage

Once the turkey is eaten, the presents are opened, and the holiday festivities come to an end… unfortunately, it’s time to put everything away and transition back to everyday life. The last holiday home design consideration you need to make is storage. Where will you store everything once the holiday season is over?

Most people opt to just shove holiday decorations into the attic during most of the year. Doing this, though, means you have to go through the process of hauling it all down and getting it back up in the attic. Not only is this process tiresome, but it also creates a safety hazard, as you’ll be going up and down a ladder with potentially heavy items. 

One solution could be to create a closet for holiday decor that’s hidden in plain sight, in your home, year-round! For example, I’ve seen people hide their Christmas tree in a closet where the door was also a bookshelf! How cool is that?

We’ve also seen lifts that would go from the garage to the attic, making it easy to take decorations out of the attic and put them back with ease. We have friends who invested in the VersaLift and love it! 

No matter what you decide to do, you’ll want to find a storage solution that makes your decorations easily accessible and protected. Not only does this make your life easier, but it also saves you money in the long run by keeping your decor in pristine shape year-round!

Your Home For the Holidays 

As you plan your build, think about how your home will need to serve different purposes in different seasons. Especially if Christmas is your favorite holiday like it is mine, these considerations can save you from a lot of pain and hassle down the road! 

Depending on the space in your build and in your budget, you could implement one or all of these ideas! It’s important for you to evaluate your priorities when it comes to your home design, so some of these ideas might make more sense for you than others. Knowing how to create a budget for your build can be difficult. Luckily, our Bootstrap Builders Program will teach you everything you need to know about how to build your own home! This includes all of your budget questions… and more!

Still not sure what you want to do? If you’ve thought about building your home but don’t know where to start, our First Steps Guide will help you. Happy building!