God makes autumn so glorious and beautiful and man in his sin is like, what about lime green and purple, and witchcraft, for how we decorate this time of year? This post is a distillation of my observing what elements of autumn decor make your home look sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing. The best fall decorative elements kind of fell into two headings.
One is elements of nature – branches, cut stems, gourds and pumpkins, and I would put candles here as well for the beauty of an open flame. The other big heading is texture.
A thing about decorating in autumn is I think you don’t have to overdo it. I am speaking about type not quantity. I do a lot in quantity. I am not a minimalist. But I am saying it is simple in types – natural beauty and texture – because I think that’s what you want to showcase. When you layer that in tastefully to what you already have going on in your home the rest of the year, I think it looks really good.
COPPER
I do not have a set of copper pots that I do in the kitchen all year round or anything. (Some people do heavy copper kitchens really beautifully.) But I put copper metal in the fall palette. I can like copper for christmas as well. But more prominently fall.
CANDLES
I do some scented candles and then a lot of unscented for more glow. You can do more scent with stove top simmers or diffusers.
PLAIDS
The fall pattern. Don’t hold back.
WOODS, WOOD TONES
A lot of homes have wood tones year-round of course, because it’s beautiful. But consider extra pedestals or other objects that cozy things further. I think this time of year your home can absorb a little more visual warmth. I don’t like that the whole year. Because it gets heavy and dated if you have too much wood tone, in my opinion. But autumn can take a little more. Same with warm tones in general. I do more cool tones than warm tones just with my taste in interior design. But in autumn, I up it.
ELEMENTS FROM NATURE
So I mean you can pay to get stuff – fresh or dried. (Dried is so beautiful for fall.) But I am just going to really highly endorse clippings of whatever’s in your yard. I like the local beauty of that and of course money. You can totally do, and that might be money well spent for the aesthetic priority, a really expensively done autumn bouquet. We’ve all seen that done well. But also just put reds, browns, and oranges into all the vases you already have. As listed above, also gourds, pumpkins, even feathers.
— —
In life sometimes you need to say the dos, and sometimes you need to say the do nots. Next are the things I would avoid, that take autumn decor away from “classy,” which is the descriptive word in the title of this post that could also be substituted with “refined,” “tasteful,” “sophisticated” – what I think helps a home not look low brow.
- Lame signage
- Junky knick knack stuff
- Fake floral and stems
For the junky knick knack point, I actually can like tabletop stuff. And you can even do kitchy stuff tastefully. (I think you have to be a pretty artistic person to thread that needle; people do it.)
All posts about autumn are here.
