Enjoy a natural and simple style for Christmas decorating with these French Country Christmas decor inspired ideas! You can use these easy tips for any room in your home as you prepare to give your French Country cottage style decor a festive look for the holiday season!
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 country decor and especially with neutral colors. Combined with my love for Christmas decorating, you can imagine that this post about French country 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 the French country style, I think you will still find simple ideas that you can use for beautiful and natural Christmas decorations.
Actually, even though I love all things vintage French, our home definitely isn’t always styled perfectly to the French country Christmas decor style elements. However, I take inspiration from these French Country Christmas decor elements to blend with my vintage style, the look of our home, and what works best for our home and family!
How to Decorate in French Country Style?
The first thing is to define what the French Country style is for decorating and then we can have a better understanding of what that looks like for the Christmas season.
What immediately drew me to this style back in 2011 was how peaceful and restful the look made the home feel. 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 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 12 years ago now! These same elements can help you create the French Country Christmas decor style also.
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
What does a French Country house look like?
One more quick question about the French Country style that relates to the French Country Christmas decor we are chatting about today is what a French country house actually looks like. In one of the places we visited, the rustic wooden beams were the first thing I noticed!
Secondly, the use of stone, brick, and concrete throughout the flooring, furnishings, and accents jumped out at me. I believe that was the first place I saw a concrete countertop that later inspired my own concrete countertops in our kitchen.
Thirdly, French Country style always includes accents with a warm and weathered appearance. Even if you are mixing in new items (which is totally fine to do, by the way), the overall style should feel like it has been curated over time with pieces that have been well-loved and used for many years.
These elements make up the heart of the French Country style:
- Rustic wood architecture
- Natural stone, brick, and concrete/stucco
- Weathered appearance
Now that we have a better understanding of how to get the French Country decor look, let’s move on to some specific ways you can get that festive feeling in your own home with French Country Christmas decor style. Plus, I’ll share my own absolute favorites for the French Country Christmas decor for the holidays too!
Simple & Natural French Country Christmas Decor Ideas
French Country 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 French Country style.
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 our French Country Christmas decor. 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 eucalyptus for French Country Christmas decor. THIS eucalyptus looks so real and adds such a gorgeous touch to all of my Christmas garlands.
Trees
Even though the French Country Christmas decor style calls for trees with pretty velvet ribbons, candles, 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!!!) We have so many special ornaments from trips, adventures, vacations, and special events. It’s always so fun!
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 a French Country Christmas decor style tree.
You can also bring in a miniature tree for a side table or console table vignette. This year, I added one on the large vintage scale in my kitchen island! I have another on the basket coffee table in the music room. Using battery fairy lights, I turned this table top miniature tree into a festive twinkling tree for the season!
These kinds of miniature trees don’t require decorating, though you may enjoy adding a simple velvet blush ribbons for the Christmas season. Then, once Christmas is over, take the velvet bow off and enjoy the table top tree for a winter centerpiece too!
Here are a few examples:
- 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 for some natural and rustic charm.
- Add sparkle to your tree with crystal ornaments. (Watch for discarded crystal chandelier pieces at flea markets and antique stores! They make great ornaments!)
Greenery Clippings
A quick and inexpensive way to add even more French Country Christmas decor style to your home is to hang fresh evergreen clippings around the house. Trader Joe’s always has beautiful bundles.
For more budget-friendly decorating, head to your local Christmas tree farm or big box hardware store, like Home Depot. Often, I pick up free evergreen clippings that are laying around the farm for no additional cost. They are happy for me to help clean up and I’m happy for the free decor! Plus, the greenery clippings make our house feel and smell so cozy!
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 French Country Christmas decor:
- 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
Wreaths
Wreaths are perfect decorations to add that cozy French Country Christmas decor style for the season. Wreaths are so inviting, anyway, and they seem especially welcoming during the Christmas season. THIS is my favorite realistic wreath to use all around the inside of our home. Since greenery is one of the best ways to add a cozy feel to a home for Christmas decorating, I like to invest in quality wreaths that I can use year after year. THESE are so incredibly realistic. I literally have people walk up, touch the wreath in my kitchen, and still ask if it’s real or not. Every single Christmas season. Haha!
Similarly, you can use small wreaths for an easy way to add a small touch of greenery around your holiday home. I like to hang small wreaths on the back of our dining room chairs, using simple jute twine.
The other place where I absolutely love to use simple wreath decor is as a focal point for a pretty Christmas table setting. Small wreaths, like THESE, are perfect to make each place setting look elegant and extra special!
I also use extra tiny wreaths, like these wreath napkin rings, to tie up extra pretty packages under the Christmas tree! Even adding a tiny wreath to a few presents under the tree will add such a pretty and thoughtful style. THESE mini wreath napkin rings work perfectly and they are budget-friendly too. I save them as the gifts are opened and use them year after year!
French Country 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 French Country Christmas decor style too.
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 French Country Christmas decor:
- Vintage-style ornaments in a big wooden bowl or dough bowl on the coffee table
- Wooden nativity scene (mine isn’t vintage but if you have a vintage nativity scene, 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
French Country Christmas Decor Ideas with Texture and Layers
For me, decorating is really all in the details. The French Country 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 interior design French Country style with some magic of Christmas sparkle.
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 so don’t feel like you have to replace everything or even go all out. You can focus on bringing in a favorite thing or two to each space and decorating around it with what you already have!
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 and the holiday season is the perfect time to include these elements in your French Country Christmas decor!
Here are some of my favorite ways to add texture to my French Country 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 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
- Add twinkle lights for a soft, cozy glow
- Instead of tree skirts, set the Christmas tree in a vintage or thrifted basket
French Country Christmas Decor Ideas with Classic French Decor
One of my favorite ways to decorate is to use vintage pieces that I’ve invested in over the years. These are pieces 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 vintage treasures 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 French Country style and have used it for so many years in my decorating, I have a variety of favorites that I can use not only in the main living areas, but through the rest of the house too.
Here are some classic decor accents that can help create that French Country decor style, no matter the season:
- Glass cloche with seasonal decor (vintage-style ornaments are perfect for the Christmas season!)
- Weathered dough bowl
- Crocks and stoneware
- Ironstone
- Copper accents
- Old 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 French Country Christmas decor to use this year. It will be so fun to start decking the halls and creating a cozy feeling all throughout our home.
Since the first year I used this style in my Christmas decorating, I’ve loved it so much. Curating pieces over time is the right 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, and starting having some decorating fun! I hope this post has sparked a little inspiration to include some French Country Christmas decor style into your own Christmas decorations to make your home feel super cozy with an extra bit of Christmas cheer too! You can shop some of my favorites for French Country Christmas Decor, conveniently curated for you right HERE!
Most of all, I hope that as you create a cozy Christmas home for your whole family, you enjoy the meaning of the true season for a very Merry Christmas!
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