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Creating a Themed Front Yard with Christmas Decor

Aug 14th 2023

There is something magical about the sight of a beautifully themed front yard Christmas display with thoughtfully curated ornaments, lights, and other decorative elements.

You may think that creating something magical might be difficult, but creating a beautiful Christmas display for your front yard might be easier than you think! Add a new dimension to your Christmas traditions and decorating and stretch your decorating skills a little by creating a themed display!

Whether you want to go all the way and create something like a music-synched outdoor Christmas light display, or make a simple but richly nutcracker-based scene with stately resin nutcracker statues, nothing shouts “Christmas!” more than a well-thought-out Christmas light show or well-placed Christmas decor.

Not only can a carefully-crafted front-yard display or an outdoor light show improve the magic of the scene and create a frame for your other decorations, but it can increase curb appeal, too!

Your front-yard display is one of the few areas of Christmas decorating that will bring joy not only to you, your friends, and family but to the entire neighborhood - spreading Christmas cheer that both inspires and brings joy to you and your family.

Planning and Theme Selection

Without a plan, there’s no way to create a themed front yard display, complete with greenery and outdoor Christmas lights.

First, you need to start with a vision, and that comes from within. What appeals to you? This is the question you need to answer to frame the groundwork.

There are all sorts of themes you can adopt - for instance, you can follow a traditional Christmas theme with lots of greenery and old-world elements, gold and silver, and red and green ornaments.

You could also take a more modern approach, such as winter wonderland themes, with plenty of white and silver elements reminiscent of snow, rustic and farmhouse-inspired themes with berries, twigs and birds, cartoon, whimsical and storybook themes based on popular characters, and even minimalist aesthetics.

The choice is yours, but you should choose one that appeals to your personal sense of taste and that is also compatible with your home’s architecture.

For instance, if your home has a colonial aesthetic, then perhaps a traditional or winter wonderland-inspired theme is most suitable, whereas a rustic theme might work best if you live in a farmhouse or a rural area.

But the most important rule in choosing your decorative elements is this: it has to speak to you!

Christmas wreaths

Outdoor Christmas Lights: Lighting Up the Night

Once you’ve settled on a theme, it’s time to create an outdoor light display that complements it.

There are all different sorts of outdoor Christmas lights and once again this is a blank canvas for you to experiment with. Some of the most popular ways to incorporate Christmas lights are on house lines, trees, garlands, wreaths, and other greenery.

Putting Lights on the House

You can use rope lighting or C9s to accentuate a display’s natural lines, or your home’s lines, to create a light relief against a dark backdrop.

Using Your Spotlights

Another way to incorporate holiday lights is with spotlights - these can be used to create relief through light and shadows, and to make a focal point of important elements in your yard’s display, such as trees, nativity scenes, statues, or sculptures.

Adding Christmas Lights to Trees, Garlands, Wreaths, and Greenery

You can add simple and strategic lights to your natural focal points  as with 5mm mini light strands and larger, more traditional (and energy-efficient) C9 LED Christmas lights. String lights and net lights can also be used to marvelous effect to create a sense of motion, relief, or accent; these can be placed or wrapped on trees, on your home itself, or wrapped around greenery. You can even light your front yard’s pathways with lights and stakes!

Christmas wreaths

For more helpful tips, check  out this article on successfully hanging Christmas lights.

Showcasing Festive Displays

Larger decorative elements like lighted figures and decorative resin sculptures can also be used to add depth and character to a front yard Christmas display.

Take care when positioning and arranging these larger elements of your display (like sculptures) as where you place them, they will often become natural focal points.

There are countless ways to arrange these larger fixtures; you can cluster them centrally, use them at the margins of the display to create a sort of frame, or stagger them.

Christmas wreaths

When placing them, take care not to balance and scale the proportion, size, and density of your display so that you don’t overwhelm the scene. A well-done front yard Christmas display will look fluid, continuous, and harmonious - not scattered and disproportional.

Experiment with placement, take a step back, and don’t be afraid to ask for a second set of eyes - teamwork makes the dreamwork!

Incorporating Greenery and Natural Elements

Both natural and artificial Christmas greenery can be used to great effect in outdoor Christmas displays - greenery looks natural outdoors, as it is!

Where possible, you can highlight natural greenery, such as living holly trees, pine, spruce, and fir trees, and yew shrubs, by accenting them with outdoor Christmas lights. Consider wrapping larger trees to create a brighter focal point, naturally replete with organic greenery.

You can also use artificial Christmas greenery, like PVC wreaths, garlands, sprays, and swags, to add color and accent to the other fixtures of your outdoor display.

Christmas wreaths

Christmas wreaths, for instance, can be placed on doors, windows, over archways, and even on garage doors, mailboxes, gates, and fence posts. Similarly, you can wrap balusters, fences, pillars, columns, and other linear elements of your home’s architecture with Christmas garlands. Norfolk pine garland is a versatile and realistic accent that can be used here, even accented with outdoor Christmas lights.

Christmas greenery is, itself, also a blank canvas on which you can exercise your creativity. You can add lights, Christmas ribbon, and even twigs, berries, pine cones, and fake snow to add color and motion while filling in blank spaces within the greenery. You can also get creative with outdoor shatterproof ornaments that can be used to catch the light and align with the overall color scheme of your theme.

Adding Personal Touches

Now for the secret ingredient to a truly custom-themed front yard Christmas display - the personal touch.

Tap into your inner creativity and get crafty. Making unique yard signs and decor for windows, doors, and mailboxes - even a custom-decorated wreath - is a great way to get the family involved.

You can make your own custom touches together and add them to your outdoor displays, which will create memories that will last forever and which will really add a special, irreplaceable touch to your themed yard display.

Christmas wreaths

Getting Started with a Themed Front Yard Christmas Display

Creating a custom-themed front yard Christmas display can be an extremely rewarding project and can give you plenty of opportunities to craft and create with family, friends, and loved ones.

Decorations like ornaments, ribbons, greenery, outdoor Christmas lights, trees, sculptures and figurines, yard signs, and much more can completely transform your yard into a magical display that will delight young and old. And, at the end of it, you and your entire community can enjoy the harmony of a themed, balanced display that will create Christmas magic for the whole area.

Start getting ready for the Christmas season now while you still have a few months left! Check out  themes that appeal to you and start planning your display, lighting, ornaments and accents so you can craft a vision for your front yard - and then make it happen!