Do you love the beauty of vintage French Christmas decor?  You can use these easy tips for any room in your home to mix old and new decor with a festive vintage French Christmas decor style!

It all started for me when we spent a day in the French countryside antiquing back in 2011.  Ever since, I’ve loved all things related to and inspired by vintage French decor and especially with the warm neutrals mixed with antiqued gold. Combined with my love for Christmas decorating, you can imagine that this post about vintage French Christmas decor is so fun for me to write!

There are so many beautiful ways to decorate for the Christmas season!  Even if you don’t consider your home to be a vintage French style, I think you will still find simple ideas that you can use to incorporate elements of the vintage French Christmas decor style.

Actually, even though I love all things vintage French, our home definitely isn’t always styled perfectly to the French country style elements.  However, I take inspiration from these elements to blend with my vintage style, the look of our home, along with new and vintage Christmas decorations I already have to add my own personal touch to the vintage French Christmas decor style.

I recently shared my home tour and thought it would be fun to go back and show a little more detail of some of my favorite vintage French Christmas decor style elements.  Hopefully you can gather some ideas here that you will enjoy for your own home this Christmas season!

​Thrifting with the Gals

Before we jump into the details of the vintage French Christmas decor style, let me introduce you to the Thrifting with the Gals!  I love joining with these amazing home decor blogging friends each month to share our thrifted finds, decor tips, DIY ideas, and sometimes even our antiquing trips!  This month, there are so many wonderful ideas for the holiday season and I know you’re going to love seeing the creativity and beauty in each one.

• Rachel from The Pond’s Farmhouse
• Ann from Dabbling and Decorating
• Lora from Create and Ponder
• and our guest host this month, Anna from Skylark House

At the end of this post, you can see a sneak peek from each one and then head on over and see the fun and beautiful things they are sharing.  Of course, it’s all related to two of our favorite things: thrift stores and vintage decor!

How to Decorate in French Country Style?

Okay, back to decorating with vintage French Christmas decor style!  The first thing is to define what the vintage French style is for decorating and then we can have a better understanding of what a great addition vintage decorations can be for the Christmas season.

What immediately drew me to this style back in 2011 was how peaceful and restful the spaces felt.  The use of neutral colors, warm wood tones, vintage patina, and antique touches made me feel so at home.

With the added touches of gold, lots of texture, and mix of patterns, the French Country style has a curated feeling rather than looking “over decorated.”  Of course, the rustic touches appealed to my vintage decor-loving self too!

How to decorate with vintage Christmas decorations?

Here are some easy ideas to bring the overall look and style vintage French Christmas decor into your home for the holidays:

• Vintage ornaments
• Velvet ribbon
• Brass candle holders
• Candle light (I prefer these flameless candles so I can have a cozy glow each evening without worrying about safety!)
• Lots of greenery, either fresh greenery or faux greenery will work!
• Vintage items, such as vintage containers, dishes, and trays
• Small trees for table tops
• Mercury glass ornaments or decorations and touches of silver
• Christmas village houses (actual vintage Putz houses are great or any kind of houses that have the same idea)
• Woven textures
• Fairy string lights
• Dried orange fruit garlands

How to make a house look French Country?

If you love the French Country style but aren’t sure where to start, these are the things I started with to change the look of our home over 14 years ago now!  Once in awhile, I get a home decorating creative block.  Going back to these basics always helps me focus on what I really love for our home.

​Create a French Country style with these essential elements:

• Neutral colors warmed up with texture and a mix of patterns
• Wood tones
• Natural elements and cues taken from nature
• Vintage furniture, especially with original patina (such as painted or chippy)
• Lots of woven texture with baskets and accessories

How to Decorate with Simple Vintage French Christmas Decor Style

Vintage French Christmas Decor Ideas with Greenery

One of the best ways to bring a bit of Christmas cheer into any space of your own home is by adding evergreen garlands, clips of greenery, and trees.  Whether you use fresh or faux trees, you can still create a really natural look that leans into the vintage French Christmas decor style.  For some extra sparkle, tuck in simple fairy light strands on a solid or slow glow twinkle setting.  The cozy glow makes any space feel extra magical for not only the Christmas season, but the winter months also!

Vintage French Christmas Decor: Garlands

Since I like to decorate early and leave my decor up almost until New Years, I have found realistic faux evergreen garlands to work the best for us.  However, I do love using fresh greenery and always add a few fresh garlands around our home too.  In addition to the traditional draping of garlands across the mantel, I also love adding them around windows, in door openings, and across the large mirror in our music room.

THIS garland is my absolute favorite and it is so incredibly realistic.  At the same time, THIS garland is a lot less expensive and looks very similar!  I highly recommend adding a few to your collection each year.  This is what I’ve done and now I almost have enough to do my whole house with my absolute favorites!

Tip: Layer pine, cedar, or evergreen garlands with realistic stems of other winter greenery and eucalytpus.  THIS eucalyptus looks so real and adds such a gorgeous touch to all of my Christmas garlands.

​

Vintage French Christmas Decor: Trees

Even though the vintage French Christmas decor style calls for trees with pretty velvet ribbons, candles, vintage decorations, and soft lights, I have no plans of giving up our traditional family tree!  In fact, it is one of the highlights of our season each year.  Our family loves to gather and pull out our ornaments to decorate our big family tree together.  (We replaced our tree with THIS one and it is absolutely gorgeous and ON SALE!!!) We have so many special ornaments from trips, adventures, vacations, and special events.  It’s always so fun!  What does make our tree tie in with the vintage French Christmas decor style is the sense of nostalgia with our Christmas holiday decorations that have sentimental value to our family!

Tip:  However, because we’ve collected our ornaments in neutral colors of gold, silver, white, and wood, our family tree can still blend in with any decor style we would choose over the years!  If you want to use certain colors, add those pops of color with inexpensive ornaments that do not have sentimental value to your family!

I love adding multiple trees around our home.  Over the past several years, I’ve focused on slowly replacing a tree at a time with pretty trees that look amazing decorated or even undecorated!  On these trees, I love adding elements that are more specific to French Country Christmas tree.

Here are a few examples of vintage French Christmas decor style for the tree:

• Tie velvet ribbon to some of the branches, letting it hang loosely.
• Clip battery-operated candles to the branches for a vintage glow and cozy feel.
• Hang vintage ornaments in neutral colors on the tree.
• Use fresh fruit, such as dried orange slices, to hang on your tree.
• Add sparkle to your tree with crystal ornaments.  (Watch for discarded crystal chandelier pieces at flea markets and antique stores!  They make great ornaments!)

Vintage French Christmas Decor: Greenery Clippings

A quick and easy way to add even more vintage French Christmas decor style to your holiday decorations is to hang fresh evergreen clippings around your home.  Trader Joe’s always has beautiful bundles that you can pick up inexpensively.

For more budget-friendly decorating, head to your local Christmas tree farm.  Often, I pick up free evergreen clippings that are laying around the farm.  They are happy for me to help clean up and I’m happy for the free decor!

If you don’t have free evergreen clippings, THESE small faux stems are absolutely perfect and so easy to decorate with too!

Here are a few places to hang a pretty little bough of fresh greenery for Christmas decorating:

• Use a suction cup to hang it from a mirror
• Hang in a door opening
• Use a hook to hang it on a door
• Add it to a peg rack or row of hooks
• Use velvet ribbon or twine to tie it to the back of dining room chairs

Vintage French Christmas Decor Ideas with Wooden Elements

Just as weathered wooden elements are a staple in the French Country home design, they can also add to the vintage French Christmas decor style for your seasonal decorating.

Wooden accents throughout your own home can add a touch of that old world decor style that is typical in French Country decorating.

Here are a few favorite ways that I like to use to add wooden tones in my Christmas decor:

• Vintage-style ornaments in a big wooden bowl or dough bowl on the coffee table
• Wooden nativity set (mine isn’t vintage but if you had vintage nativity scenes, this is a great time to use it too!) on a side table
• DIY wooden ornaments on one of my smaller trees (find the easy tutorial HERE!)
• Wooden ornaments on the tree
• Wood tones on my table settings, such as a pretty wooden bowl

Vintage French Christmas Decor Ideas with Texture and Layers

For me, decorating is really all in the details.  The vintage French Christmas decor style is no different.  Even if you don’t live in a cute farmhouse in the French countryside (wouldn’t that be fun?!), you can add layers and texture to your decor for that French Country style in the Christmas season.

We chatted about wooden elements, such as a dough bowl, and these pieces are a good idea for adding texture.  You can also add woven texture, such as baskets or vintage demijohns with winter greenery stems for a simple centerpiece.

Remember those classic elements of the French Country style that we chatted about earlier?  You can add touches of wood and stone into your decor while also providing great texture.  Vintage stoneware or crocks are a great idea.  Antique ironstone or a marble dish can bring in that needed stone accent too.  A little bit can go a long way with the French style.

Consider soft textures, too, such as linen, grain sacks, and velvet.  The mixture of these rustic and elegant textures plays perfectly into the French style.

Vintage Christmas Ornaments

​Another fun way to bring the vintage French Christmas decor style into your home is with vintage Christmas ornaments.  I love to pick up these vintage finds at the local thrift store, estate sales, or flea markets.

Recently, I saw a lot of boxes of shiny brite ornaments at an antiques market.  Even though they weren’t the colors that fit my personal style, these fun retro Christmas decorations made a great holiday display!  I did also find a big bag of neutral vintage Christmas ornaments for only $5, so of course, I grabbed those.

​Vintage Christmas ornaments make such a pretty holiday display in a big bowl as a table centerpiece or even in several small bowls, like I did in my dining room with some of my ironstone collection.  Vintage tree ornaments also look pretty under a cloche or displayed in a vintage jar or vessel of some kind.

​Adding elements of mercury glass can bring such a pretty sparkle to your old world Christmas decorating this time of year too!  THESE ornament garlands are one of my favorite ways to add mercury glass into my Christmas decorations.

​My other favorite mercury glass decor are THESE mini ornaments.  I use them as table scatter, fill old bottles and jars with them, or just display them in a pretty bowl!

Here are some of my favorite ways to add texture to my vintage French Christmas decor:

• Velvet ribbon to tie wreaths on the front door or tie flatware or napkins on table settings on the dining table
• Pretty pine cones in a wooden bowl
• Hang chunky knit stockings on the mantel
• Add mercury glass garland or ornaments in decor
• Use natural wood accessories, like THESE natural wood nutcrackers
• Vintage demijohn MISSING (can’t find anything similar on Amazon) with faux pine stems (THESE are so realistic!)
• Vintage crock with a table top tree in the living room
• Put a big Christmas tree in a large basket or vintage crate
• Display vintage or vintage style tree ornaments in a bowl, jar, or vessel
• Feature sentimental handmade ornaments in your home décor at Christmas time

Vintage French Christmas Decor Ideas with Classic French Home Décor

One of my favorite ways to decorate is to use vintage items that I’ve invested in over the years.  These are pieces with timeless styles that can be used year round in our home.  At the same time, I don’t have to store them away and you’ll find a lot of special vintage pieces that just rotate through my decor.

I am often asked what I do with ALL of my decor.  Yes, I have a lot, partly because I love it and partly because decorating is one of my jobs!  However, you will also find a lot of the same pieces in my decor over and over again!

Because I love the classic look of the French Country style and have used it for so many years in my decorating, I have a variety of favorites that make perfect decoration to use not only in the main living areas, but through the rest of the house too.

Here are some classic decor accents that have stood the test of time to help create that vintage French Christmas decor style, no matter the season:

• Glass cloche with seasonal decor (vintage-style ornaments are perfect for the Christmas season!)
• Weathered dough bowl
• Mercury glass votive candle holders
• Crocks and stoneware
• Ironstone (watch for these pieces at local antique stores)
• Copper accents
• Brass candlesticks
• Vintage-style art (THESE are so inexpensive and easy to switch out for the seasons)
• Gold accents (I’m in love with these gold deer candlesticks!)
• Mirrors
• Pottery

Whenever you’re ready to deck the halls….

I am enjoying fall but also getting so excited as I start thinking about planning my vintage French Christmas decor to use this year.  It will be so fun to start decking the halls with holiday cheer and creating a cozy feeling all throughout our home.

Since the first year I used this vintage French Christmas decor style in my holiday season decor, I’ve loved it so much.  Curating classic pieces over time is a great way, in my opinion, to decorate for any style!  So, I’m excited to pull out my favorite collections, mix them with my vintage-style pieces for a touch of nostalgia, and starting having some Christmas decorating fun!  You can shop some of my favorites for Vintage French Christmas Decor, conveniently curated for you right HERE!

No matter whether you decorate with traditional Christmas colors, trendy colorful bulbs, minimal, modern Christmas decor, or vintage neutrals (like me), I hope that you find joy decorating your home for this most wonderful time of the year.

Most of all, as you create a cozy Christmas home with your own decorations for your whole family, you enjoy the meaning of the true season for a very Merry Christmas in your holiday celebrations!

Before you go, be sure to visit the other Thrifting with the Gals today and see the beautiful holiday inspiration they have for you!

Ann from Dabbling and Decorating

Rachel from The Pond’s Farmhouse

Lora from Create and Ponder

Anna from Skylark House

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Blessings,

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