CREDIT: FSU PUBLICATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT

Only during this time of year can the air smell like cinnamon, open fire, vanilla, roasted chestnuts, pine, peppermint, oranges, and cloves! The holidays are just around the corner and it’s almost time to spruce things up.

This festive season is celebrated with religious services, friendly greetings, gift-giving, family gatherings, shopping, and many other holidayspecific traditions.

But aside from all the customs and rituals, the designs we see during this season essentially create the winter scenery.


Geometric shapes, plaid, red, green, glitter, stripes, bright lights, and many more are all elements of design that we use to create a winter festival. There have been numerous transitions in the past decade from changes in the hues of colours to having more two-dimensional designs as opposed to three-dimensional shapes.

Alysha Wisniewski is a second year student in the interior decorating program at Fanshawe. She explained what’s trending in holiday décor this year.

“There’s a lot of sparsely decorated things,” she said. “For example, there isn’t dense groupings of greenery, it’s very much dispersed greenery, greenery that’s not grouped with other décor items.

“There’s not a lot of the traditional green and red that you typically see, there is a lot more jewel tones. As well, there aren’t as many fairy lights as there have been in the past few years, so it’s not going to be as sparkly and glittery, like you’d kind of expect. It’s not at all my idea of Christmas,” added Wisniewski.

The significance of holiday colours like red, green, gold, and purple symbolize significance in Christianity, related to Christ. Throughout time, we’ve seen hues of colours like red, shift from dark to bright. This year, according to Wisniewski, we can expect a strong red colour that scales from blood-red to purple and even brown-red.

“This year, there’ll be a lot more blues and purples, and ruby tones.”

Moreover, Wisniewski commented on the material of fabrics surpassing patterns in cloths.

“There’s going to be a lot more solid prints than there are patterns. So, plaids will definitely not be the holiday thing right now, like it was a few years ago. There’s going to be a lot more furs or synthetic furs. And, not a whole lot of geometric shapes, so it’s more textural pattern than it is colour or patterns created by colour.”

Wisniewski researches trends in interior decorating in her spare time. She is extremely passionate about decorating and greatly enjoys her program.

Sources that have also researched décor trends for this year’s holiday season, like Wisniewski forecast a more traditional appearance. The holiday image this year is predicted to represent warmth, earth, and homeliness. The use of recycled materials, inexpensive décor, DIY, and earthy neutrals are expected to be used expansively in homes.