Fall Decorating

Autumn is soon arriving in all its natural splendor, and with the crispness of fall the foliage explodes with color. Everywhere you turn a brilliant array of earthy colors meet the eye. This is a time to decorate your home with all the warm colors, vibrant hues, and rich textures of the season. Bringing a bit of fall’s beauty, bounty and color into your home can be a simple and enjoyable task.

Autumn is the season we most associate with nature. For inspiration with color, look to pumpkins, haystacks, cranberries, and fall leaves. Autumn displays her earthy browns, brilliant reds, liquid amber and orange, pear gold and muted yellow. Autumn décor is capturing the beauty outside and recreating it in your home. For a fun afternoon adventure, take your kids or grandkids outside to gather grasses, seedpods, twigs, fallen leaves, pinecones, acorns, bird nests, interesting gourds and squashes, cattails, goldenrod, berry branches and other fall plants in bloom or turning color. All you need to do is open your eyes and capture this
natural beauty.

Decorating the Front Porch with Accents from Nature

Fall is a time for cooler temperatures and extraordinary color, and it can be a great time to enjoy the scents and the ever-changing beauty of the season. When fall arrives, do not put away the outdoor chairs, tables, and outdoor decor. Instead, consider the following creative ways to decorate and update a front porch for fall. This will provide a welcoming entrance and a comfortable place to sit on warm fall days and crisp fall evenings.

Natural accents are some of the best when decorating for fall, and the bounty of the season can become part of the decorating scheme. Select small gourds of various shapes, colors, and patterns, and place them in a beautiful wicker basket. Set the basket on a side table or along side a front porch step. Better yet, fill two wicker baskets with colorful gourds. Place the baskets on both sides of the top step to welcome guests and add color to the front porch.

Fall offers flowers with some of the most vibrant and unusual colors, and fall mums are an excellent choice for decorating a front porch. Mums are available in uncommon hues, and pots of beautiful blooming fall mums along with striking green foliage make a lovely fall display. Select pots in neutral colors of graduating sizes, and fill them with eye-catching fall mums of various colors. Plant hardy trailing vines around the mums, and place them on front porch steps from smallest to largest. The largest pots should be placed on the walk leading up to the porch.

Add a wreath on your front door to feature warm, earthy tones and textures. Replace the rug at your front door with one that reflects the incredible fall colors found in nature. Decorating with a natural floral display that is bursting with the colors of fall is a great way to welcome guests.

Autumn Home Interior Accessories
Though pumpkins, gourds and leaves are traditional fall touches and should be included in any autumn décor, try to incorporate more subtle items to create an overall fall feel to your decorations. Using fall colors to spruce up everyday items in your home can include switching out your regular accent pillows for ones in fall colors, hanging a fall-colored shower curtain and towels, using a bronze tablecloth, or picking up a few mahogany or gold-toned frames for displaying photos, instead of your regular silver or black.

An essential part of autumn décor is aroma. Walking into a home where you can smell pumpkin spice or the sweet aroma of apple pie baking is priceless. Candles are always a nice fall touch. Use copper or brass candle holders for a rustic autumn accent. And of course you’ll want a few pumpkins, gourds, or fruit on a long woven basket or wooden tray. Add berry clusters, seeds and nuts, fall fruits, autumn leaves and flowers to make a colorful fall garnish. The great thing about candles is the wonderful variety of colors, scents and shapes you can find. Add a subtle scent of pear, grape, or other smells of fall to reach beyond just your sense of sight; you can add a whole new dimension to your room with the right scents. When the seasons change and winter approaches, we want to soften and warm our home. This is where fabrics become so important in giving a room the right seasonal cues. Fabric is the essence of fall decorating. Use it to warm and soften your interior. A handmade quilt draped over the back of a sofa invites guests to come in, sit down and relax. A knit blanket at the foot of a bed makes you feel comfortable when you get into bed. A shag throw rug softens the natural stone bathroom floor.

Creative Fall Flowers
Give your dining table a fall harvest look with your own unique autumn tablescape. A fall tablescape or floral arrangement makes the perfect centerpiece for your dining table. Be sure to keep your floral design low so that people aren’t separated by it; this is one of the most common mistakes people make when designing floral arrangements for the dining table.

Fall bouquets are great for decorating a table in your entry or foyer, end tables and coffee tables in your family and living room spaces, giving your guest bedroom and bathrooms a fresh look for the autumn season or adding a focal point on display shelves in any room in your home.

Fall fruits such as grapes, apples and mini pumpkins can make great fall tablescapes and floral arrangements. Use candles or votives to give your fall tablescape an added touch of color and warmth. Pumpkins are a fall favorite and make a great base for flower arrangements; you can cut the top to create a vessel inside which you can place floral foam to support your flowers, using sunflowers, orange or red roses, berry branches and dried grasses to design your arrangement.

Wicker baskets are also great for fall floral designs; try using chrysanthemums, sunflowers, tiny pumpkins, white gourds, gerberas, acorns, dry ferns and other natural fall plants to create a decorative fall basket. Use a mat of moss on a table or fireplace mantel to create a nice base to arrange orange and white pumpkins in various sizes and shapes, using one larger pumpkin as a focal point, with smaller sugar pumpkins, fruits, etc. arranged around it. Gourds, mini pumpkins, pottery and woven baskets make a great fall vignette.

You can do it! Brighten your home with touches of the season. Display your fall flower arrangements prominently where family, friends and guests can enjoy their natural beauty and get into the spirit of fall. A small amount of time invested now can bring months of pleasant echoes throughout your family’s home!

Special Thanks to Pat Pols for this wonderful article