A Victorian Christmas

The first step when you decide to decorate in a Victorian style is to choose your main color. Most of the main colors in Victorian style decorating are softer colors. They are colors that would remind you of stately old mansions.

The most popular main colors are cranberry, a light blue, pale pink or a beautiful sage green. Once you've chosen what your main color will be, just like you choose accent colors for the decorations in your home, you'll need to select an accent color.

The accent color will keep the main color from being too overwhelming. You don't want an entirely pink Victorian theme or one that's all sage green and nothing else. The results will end up gaudy instead of grand.

Accent colors work with the main colors and are usually soft silver or muted gold. They are never the brassy gold or bright silver. Remember the Victorian Christmas look has a misty feel to it, like a soft, very faint fog rolling in off the mountains on a cool autumn morning.

Any type of Christmas tree can be turned into a Victorian theme with the right decorations so don't worry about the kind of tree you have or plan to buy. In keeping with the Victorian theme, for your tree skirt, you're going to want to use a lace or crocheted one. You can find either material in the colors to match either your main or your accent color.

One of the loveliest decorations on any Victorian tree are the Christmas balls covered in lace or the crocheted ones. Along width the Christmas balls, use wire ribbon threaded from the bottom to the top of the Christmas tree.

Many of the decorations used in Victorian times featured paper decorations trimmed in soft gold and hung by fine gold string. You can find those same paper decorations today in the forms of carousel rocking horses and other designs.

The Victorian Christmas theme was also big on the use of tassels so use tassels in your decorating theme. Use table runners with tassels, use thin rope tassels to tie around your holiday napkins or use them to hold back your drapes.

For wall decorations, you can use shadow boxes filled with bits of Victorian decorating such as old photos, scraps of lace, old letters. You can find the material to make Victorian shadow boxes at most craft or online stores.