How To Decorate Your Front Porch For Christmas So It Looks Like A Magazine

It's a Sunday night the first week of December and you finally walk to the end of your driveway to look at the porch you worked on all weekend. The wreath is up, the lights are on, you spent close to $200 and from the street it looks like a few things somebody set out and forgot. It looks nothing like the picture you saved, so you decided it was your porch. Too small, too plain, or it was your taste. My friend, it was never your taste. A magazine porch is not more stuff. It's ten small decisions made in the right order, and nobody ever told you what they were. My name is Odessa. For 40 years, I've decorated this house and fed this whole family at Christmas. 22 people at the table the biggest year and every one of them walked up my front steps first. I have made every porch mistake there is and every single year I wrote down what worked in a little notebook. By the end of this you'll know exactly what size wreath your door needs, how many feet of garland it really takes to frame it, and how to group what you already own so it looks planned instead of parked. And I'm holding one thing back for the very end. It's the step every magazine porch has and almost nobody does at home. It costs nothing and it cuts your shopping list instead of adding to it. Hold on to that. We start where the work really starts and it is not at the store. First, empty the porch before you decorate it. Most of us decorate around whatever is already sitting there. The fall mums gone brown in their pots, the pumpkin going soft on the bottom step, the hose, the recycling bin, a spider web hanging off the porch light. Then we hang a beautiful wreath in the middle of all that, and the eye goes straight to the soft pumpkin. Here's the thing nobody says out loud. A magazine porch is a clean stage before it's anything else. So on your first Saturday, give it one hour. Carry everything off, sweep it, wipe the door down, because a wreath on a dusty door is a good church dress with a coffee stain on the front. Take the glass off the porch light, dump out the dead bugs, and put in one warm white bulb, the soft golden kind, never the blue-white. Use a stepstool for that, my friend, not a kitchen chair. Then walk to the end of your driveway and take one picture with your phone. That's your before. My mother did her mantle the first Saturday of December, and that's the Saturday I clear my porch. Every year. So, before you add one thing, take everything away. What goes back on starts with one decision about color, and that's where most porches go wrong. Now, before the next one. My daughter kept saying, Mama, write it all down. So I did. It's all in Odessa's Christmas house book, The Tree from the Bottom Up. The colors that pull a room together, what's worth buying, 10 pieces you can make that look expensive, and my six-week hosting plan. It's at home with odessa.shop, the first link below, or scan the QR on screen. All right, back out to that porch. Second, choose two or three colors and repeat each one in three places. What most of us do is let the porch collect a red wreath from one year, a blue light-up snowflake from another. A purple bow a grandchild picked out, a gold reindeer off a clearance shelf. Every piece is cute. Together, from the street, it reads like a yard sale. The eye wants a reason, and repetition gives it one. Your greens and your warm white lights don't count. They're the background. So pick your colors. Red and green with a little brass. Deep green, white and natural wood. Burgundy with antique gold. But here's the trick. Put your main color in three spots. The bow on the wreath, something in each planter, and something low by the steps, like a ribbon on a lantern or red berries in a basket. Give it three places and the eye connects them like dots. I learned this the year I bought too much. I came home with bags from four different stores and set it all out, and Calvin stood on the sidewalk and said it looked like the seasonal aisle, so two or three colors, each one three times, and everything else goes back in the bin. Now the door itself, and this is where nearly everybody is off by a full foot. Third, your wreath is too small. I can say that without seeing it because almost everybody's is. Most of us grab the 18-inch wreath because it's the one stacked at the front of the store and on a regular 36-inch door it looks like a postage stamp on a big envelope. My rule is simple. The wreath should be two-thirds the width of the door. On a 36-inch door, that's 24 inches at the least, and 30 if your door has a wide frame or sits under a tall porch roof. Double doors get two matching wreaths, one on each side, never one stuck over the crack. A plain 24-inch faux wreath runs $25 to $35, and plain is what you want. Fluff every branch first, 10 good minutes, no skipping. Tuck in fresh cuttings, wire on a few pine cones, and set three sprigs of red berries in a loose triangle. Hang it so the center sits at about eye level, a little above the middle of the door. My little notebook said bigger wreath three years running before I finally listened to myself. So go two-thirds the width of your door. How I dress a plain wreath so it passes for the expensive one is laid out in my book. And the wreath is only half the job, because the bow can sink it. Fourth, the bow. Most front door bows are too small and too short. Skinny ribbon, tiny loops, tails that quit two inches under the knot. From the street the bow just vanishes. You want wired ribbon two and a half to four inches wide because the wire keeps the loop standing in wind and cold. Make each loop about a third as wide as the wreath and let the tails hang at least as long as the wreath is wide. Fold each end in half the long way and snip on a slant and you get a clean v that won't fray. One good roll of 10 yards runs 10 $10 to $20. That's enough for the door bow plus two small lantern bows, which takes care of your three places for color. Now, one honest exception. Everybody loves velvet ribbon this year, and so do I, but velvet only goes outside if your door sits under a covered porch. If rain or snow can reach it, velvet soaks up the water, sags and dries spotty. Out in the weather, use a weatherproof wired ribbon. Use wide wired ribbon, big loops, long tails. And that still isn't the step I'm saving. Next is the garland, and that's where the money leaks out. Fifth, frame the whole door. What most people do is buy one nine foot garland and drape it across the top of the door frame where it hangs like a sad little mustache. A nine foot garland is not a door garland. Measure it yourself up one side, across the top, down the other. A standard door with its trim comes to about 18 to 20 feet. That's two nine foot garlands. Buy them plain for $20 to $30 a piece or buy them half off the week after Christmas for next year. Then here's what turns a plain garland into the magazine version. Layer in the real thing. Cedar, pine, magnolia leaves, boxwood. Cut it from your own yard or ask at a Christmas tree lot, where they'll hand you a pile of trimmings free or sell you a bundle for $15. Tuck a stem in every few inches so the greens run down the sides like water. Outside in the cold, fresh greens last right through New Year's. To hang it, use clear outdoor adhesive hooks every 12 to 18 inches, never nails in your door trim. So frame the whole door and layer real greens into a plain base. Exactly how I measure and layer a garland for any size door is drawn out, step by step, in my book. Now the lights, and the weekend Calvin finally put his foot down. Six. The lights. And there are two mistakes here. The first is mixing them. A strand of bright cool white on the garland. Warm white in the wreath. Colored lights in the bushes. From the street it looks like three different houses. Pick one, and for this look it's warm white, every single strand. The second mistake is too few. For a door garland, plan on one strand of 100 lights for every 3 feet, so a 20-foot frame takes 6 or 7 strands. Wind them down into the garland, not across the top, so you see a glow instead of a row of little dots. Buy lights rated for outdoor use with the UL mark on the box, and plug them into an outdoor outlet with the little test button on it. Never chain more strands end-to-end than the box allows. Never run a cord under the doormat, and never pinch one in the door. A strand with a cracked or frayed cord goes in the trash, not back in the bin. Then put the whole porch on a $10 timer, dusk to 1030. For years, Calvin sat on the porch steps in his coat that first weekend of December, untangling lights until the year he said never again. Now every strand goes back in its own zip bag, marked with where it goes. So, one color of light, enough strands, and a timer. Next, we fill the sides of the door, and it's all about height. Seventh, flank the door with a tall pair. What most people do is set one little pot off to one side, or a pair of pots that come up to your knee. Low things disappear in a picture. My rule is that whatever is in the pot should reach at least a third of the way up the door, and halfway is better. Two live dwarf Alberta spruce, three to four feet tall, run $25 to $40 a piece at a garden center, or do it for next to nothing. Take last summer's big pots, fill them with soil, and push tall cut evergreen branches straight down into the dirt, tallest in the middle, shorter around the edge. Stand up three birch logs or a few curly branches for height, and tuck in a little of your color. If the pots are too short, set each one on an upside down pot. Cover any gap at the top with pine cones or moss and never leave bare plastic showing. Here's my honest exception. If your door isn't centered, don't force a pair. Put one tall planter on the wide side and a small grouping on the narrow side, and the porch balances itself. So, flank the door tall. That cut branch planter is one of the 10 pieces in my book, and it costs next to nothing. But a pot standing alone still looks lonely, and here's why. Eight, group in threes at three heights. What most people do is line things up. A lantern, a lantern, a pumpkin, a pot, all the same height in a row along the wall. A row looks like a waiting room. A group looks planned. So build a little family beside each planter. The planter is the tall one. A big lantern is the middle. Something low sits in front. A basket of pine cones, a wooden crate of split logs, or a short stack of wrapped boxes in your colors. Lanterns should be big, 18 to 24 inches tall, and two different sizes beat two of the same. Inside them go flameless pillar candles with a built-in timer, $12 to $15 each, and they come on at 5 every evening. Real flame does not go outside near dry greens, and no candle burns with nobody watching it. The year I hosted 22 people, cars started pulling in at 4, and it was already getting dark. Those lanterns on both sides of the steps were what everybody talked about before they got their coats off. So three heights, in a group, never a row. We're nearly to my favorite, two to go. But first, look down at your feet. Ninth, dress the floor. A porch picture is mostly floor, and it's the part almost everybody forgets. What most of us have is one tired brown mat curling up at the corner. Layer it instead. Put down a 3x5 outdoor rug, buffalo check, or a wide stripe in one of your colors, $25 to $35. Then lay a plain 2x3 square mat on top, 15 to 20. With two layers, the door suddenly looks like it belongs to somebody with a plan. If you have a bench or a rocker, give it one outdoor pillow and a plaid throw folded over the arm. Just one pillow. Three pillows outside looks like a store display. Bring the throw in at night or at mildews. Then add one thing that's yours, like an old sled or a little wooden wagon. Something with a story. My grandchildren sit on my bench to pull their boots off, and they know right where the pine cone basket is, because they keep moving it. So, layer the floor, dress the seat lightly, and give the porch one piece with a story. My whole porch list, what's worth buying and what to skip, is in the book. And now, the one I promised you at the start. Here it is. Light the house behind the porch. Look at those magazine pictures again. They're taken at dusk, and behind every wreath, the windows are glowing. A lamp is on in the front room. The curtains are open. We do the opposite. We pour everything into the porch and leave the house dark. And from the street, the porch sits in front of black glass like a stage with no back wall. So at 4:30, when the sky turns that deep blue, open the front curtains and turn on one lamp in every front window. Upstairs, too. Set a plug-in candlelight on each windowsill, about $5 a piece, and put those on a timer, too. Now you see why it cuts your shopping list. You already own the lamps. Once the windows glow, the porch needs half of what you were about to buy. The first year I did it, I walked to the end of the driveway and just stood there in my slippers. Calvin came out to see what was wrong. Nothing was wrong. So, light the house, not just the porch. If this helped, everything I told you tonight, and a good deal more, is set down in the book. It's the first link below, or the small code still in the corner of your screen. And my friend, if your porch never looked like the pictures, it was never your taste. It was a wreath a foot too small, a garland ten feet too short, a row where there should have been a group, and a dark house behind it all. Those are small things and you can fix every one of them with what you already have and a few dollars. So here's what to do this weekend. On Saturday afternoon, carry everything off the porch, sweep it, and put in that warm bulb. Then measure your door, up, across, and down, and write the number on a card for your purse so the next time you stand in front of a garland you know exactly how many feet to carry home. And right as the sky goes blue, turn on the front lamps, walk to the end of the driveway, and take your before picture. Keep it. Next year, you'll hold it next to the after and laugh. My first married Christmas, Calvin and I had a crooked tree and one string of lights, and people still came up those steps smiling because the window was lit. Start there, light the window, and then build the porch around it. 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