How to create a Christmas room: Ideas for making your home an immersive Christmas experience

A table decorated with Christmas-themed glassware, mugs and serving dishes, with a shiny, green, satin tablecloth.

During the holidays, immersive experiences like themed bars, light walks and Instagram photo pop-ups are everywhere. Ever wonder why they’re so popular? We’re betting it has something to do with the way they use a multisensory experience to wrap you up in the magic of the holidays. 

And here’s the great news: You can use this exciting trend to level up your Christmas season and enhance the yuletide joy for your family, friends and neighborhood in your own home!

If Christmas is a joyously creative time for you and you’re looking for a way to increase your family’s Christmas fun and make new kinds of memories, keep reading. We’re about to share a whole sleigh full of ideas for ways to go ALL OUT and create a Christmas room this year.

Inspired? Create and share by tagging @HallmarkStores.

What’s a Christmas room?  

It’s a space where you pull out all the stops. A pleasurable pop-up filled with cheerful, festive, playful or even glamorous things for your family to see, touch, smell, hear and taste. One that brings every fun, joyous and meaningful thing about Christmas together to treat all their senses and spread holiday cheer!

Whether you’re creating your Christmas room just for you and your family or constructing a whole walk-through experience as part of a neighborhood competition, we’ve got ideas. If you have a specific need, click the links below, but feel free to just scroll on through and soak up all the seasonal inspiration!

But first up: Themes! Because a Christmas room has to have a theme. It’s where it all starts! And we’ve got some fun-filled ideas, with lots more to follow.

Retro Cheer Pop-Up  

This theme idea is all about cute classics like Santa and Mrs. Claus, holly-jolly snowmen, and dishes with a mod vibe. Try a selfie station with these same icons and an ornament exchange around a tree with vintage vibes.

A table decorated with Christmas-themed glassware, mugs and serving dishes, with a shiny, green, satin tablecloth.

 

A holiday selfie station with a background made of holiday gift wrap and silver tinsel garland; a basket of props like silly glasses, a Santa hat and an elf hat lay nearby; around the selfie background, several holiday cards are taped to the wall; next to this scene is a gift exchange setup with a pastel pink Christmas tree and numbered boxes holding Christmas ornaments.

 

Setting up a selfie backdrop

Make your staging area using fun gift wrap, lots of garland, some tinsel and pretty Christmas cards. Keep the lights very soft so that you can have a little twinkle but not get washed out by too much shine. 

Tip: Have a “cute-off”—a contest to see who can take the funniest, sweetest, goofiest or coolest pics with another family member or friend. You can even get your fur babies involved. Make sure you have plenty of props around to help everyone ham it up.

Tips for trees with a vintage look

To give your tree a mod look, go with throwback colors and textures, like pink flocked or silver tinsel branches! This Nostalgic Glass ornament collection and these Nifty Fifties Santa ornaments would be right at home on a tree like that! We also love these Mrs. Claus, Vintage Angel and Vintage Reindeer ornaments. 

Ornament exchange fun

Think of your Christmas ornaments as stories. Each ornament says something that gives you a way to help connect with your family and friends even more. So, make space in your Christmas room for an ornament hanging or gift exchange.

You and your family, friends, and neighbors can do things like:

  • Ask everyone to bring a wrapped gift ornament and assign a number to each. Then have each person draw a number to decide which ornament they’ll get! Or you could keep things simple or allow people to swap, as in a white elephant gift exchange.
  • Bring a beloved ornament to hang on a special tree together where you will celebrate together throughout the season.
  • Find, make and wrap ornaments as gifts for one another to exchange early in the Christmas season so that each person can hang their ornament in a special place or take their ornament home. And when you hang out together or visit one another over the holidays, your stories will be there. 🥰

Tip: If you’d like Christmas to be more about memories than getting more stuff (or for budget reasons), think about a family gift exchange where each family member takes something that’s been gently used and transforms it into a sweet, memorable and personalized gift.

Flannel and Channel  

Is a Christmas room complete without a snow-filled Hallmark Channel happily ever after? No-ho-ho-ho! Here’s a chance to make some space for the family to have some downtime together, away from the holiday rush and crush.

A hot cocoa station is stocked with paper cups, red plaid-patterned paper plates, and holly patterned paper napkins; the station is also stocked with jars of cocoa garnishes like candy canes, marshmallows and sprinkles; next to this is a Hallmark Christmas movie bingo setup, complete with a Hallmark Channel fleece throw, and popcorn bucket.

 

Cozy-up corner

  • Pile on soft, comfy, plush blankets. Preferably ones big enough to cover multiple friends or family members, like this Hallmark Channel fleece throw.
  • Plus-up that popcorn with pretzels, chocolate-covered candy and peanut butter cups, and pile it all into a big enough bowl for everyone’s hands to fit in.
  • Have plenty of cute mugs on hand for hot cocoa!
  • Add an interactive element to your Hallmark Christmas movie extravaganza by passing out these bingo cards before the premiere starts.
  • Finally, fire up the remote and cue up all the Hallmark Christmas movies!

Tip: Thanks to Hallmark+, when we say all the Hallmark Christmas movies, we mean ALL of them! You’ll also get access to all-new, exclusive series like “Finding Mr. Christmas,” plus rewards like free cards and monthly coupons. Sign up for a free trial here!

Create a Christmas beverage bar

Don’t miss the chance to set up a holiday beverage station in your Christmas room to warm up your friends and fam! Think about stocking your station with all the makings for mugs of warm hot cocoa with marshmallows, peppermint sticks, whipped cream and sprinkles.

Kids and adults alike will love coming in from the frosty outside to a sweet-smelling indoor space where they can drink hot chocolate from festive paper cups, grab a sweet treat or snag something salty from your holiday-flavored popcorn bowl. And some plaid-patterned plates and cocktail napkins will help make things extra festive!

Tip: Include a couple of liqueurs or other naughty-but-nice spirited beverages to take your hot chocolate to adult status for the grown-ups. Check out more beverage bar ideas here.

Have a watch party!

From old holiday classics to all-new Hallmark Christmas movie premieres, watching movies is a fun way for everyone to come together and share an experience. Here are a few fun takes on watch parties to try:

  • Ask that your guests arrive with their cushiest pillow and dressed in their favorite matching pajamas.
  • Set your intentions to chill until the whole vibe is relaxed, merry and jolly. If you all watch until the wee hours, this can be a perfect time and place for a family slumber party.
  • Between episodes or during movie breaks, you could challenge each other to a bingo game, play a game of cards, charades, 20 Questions: Christmas style, a family-friendly video game or something else that you like to play together.

If you want ways to make your Christmas and Kwanzaa rituals and activities even more special, here are some great ideas for you.

Wonder Workshop  

Doing all of this to delight the kiddos? Make a Christmas pop-up that’s all about them with a gingerbread construction zone and a station for writing letters to Santa!

Two kids-themed Christmas pop-up experiences sit side-by-side; one is a gingerbread house decorating table, while the other is a

 

Gingerbread house construction zone

  • Use a gingerbread house template to bake your cookie construction materials in advance and invite your family to be Christmastime architects.
  • Put out plenty of royal icing to hold the yummy houses together and extra buttercream frosting, candy, cookie crumbs, sprinkles and other treats to build your gingerbread dream home.
  • You can also get a little wild in your gingerbread zone and include other kinds of cookies to decorate and exchange with your kids, friends and neighbors.
  • If sticky little fingers touching everything in your house isn’t your thing, you can make gingerbread houses from cardboard instead. Have the little ones decorate them with markers, fun Christmas stickers, cute holiday gift wrap, festive ribbons and bright pom-poms.
  • Either way, this Better Together gingerbread house and candy cane plush set is a fun way to set up your theme and provide inspiration. You could also hand them out as a gift along with more stickers, crayons or markers and some holiday treats in a little goodie bag!
  • Challenge fellow adults to a friendly gingerbread house building contest. May the merriest mess maker win!

Letters to Santa station

Want to incorporate the magic of Santa into your at-home Christmas pop-up? Why not make a corner of your Christmas room a mailing station to the North Pole? This is a great gathering activity for your kids and their neighborhood friends. 

Make a cardboard letterbox or use a wooden box you may already have and paint it red or wrap it with gift wrap, then decorate it with Christmas-themed stickers. Or if you’re the artsy type, hand-paint it with cute lettering!

Put out fun or pretty holiday stationery, greeting cards, boxed Christmas cards, notes and colorful crayons or colored pencils so the kids can send Santa good wishes, jokes and of course, their holiday wish lists.

Parents can also help kids write, design and color their messages together and then drop them into the mailbox for Mr. Claus.

Bonus: This activity is a great way to teach those digitally native kids of yours how to write thankful notes and address envelopes!

More Christmas Room Decorating Ideas  

The living room might feel like a natural space to get started because you’ve already got your tree as a focal point. As you choose your theme or style for the tree, ask yourself how to expand it around the room. For instance:

Mantel ideas

As you drape your garland across your fireplace, think about sprinkling your theme in. Add fun ornaments and figurines or mementos and memories.

  • itty bittys® are a cute addition to any mantel, especially for kids, and we have just about every fandom you can think of.
  • Mix in small, framed pictures of your family or stylish candle arrangements. You could also hang your handmade snowflakes from your mantel with ribbon.
  • Get some inexpensive garland and make it look fuller by attaching some baubles that go with your theme, weaving some patterned ribbon through it and adding floral picks like poinsettia blossoms, holly berries or pine cones.
  • Hang those stockings early! These patchwork stockings would be great for a classic, rustic Christmas look, and you can shop for fabric that matches your theme.

Christmas Room Atmosphere and Ambiance Ideas  

If you love Christmas as much as a certain Hallmark writer, you know a great Christmas room is going to be about way more than decor. Like I said at the beginning, this is a multi-sensory situation!

So here are some ways you can draw them into an incredible holiday experience using sight, sounds and even smells, to evoke even more Christmas magic.

Lighting ideas

Creating a Christmas room is an opportunity to share the joy of shimmering lights with everyone you love. So give them the gift of glimmer!

String your living room, dining room, entryway and other gathering spaces with lots and lots of twinkling lights to create the mood and the magic of Christmas. You can find an array of light shapes, sizes and types of bulbs, from fairy lights and string lights to bubble bulbs that come in different degrees of warmth or coolness. 

You can even layer on several different kinds of light. It all depends on what you want your family’s Christmas vibe to be.

  • If Christmas is all or mostly about making memories for the littles, colored lights are a particular thrill. You can use them to decorate a special kids tree or even their bedroom!
  • If clear lights peace you out and fill you with a sense of calm and ease, just know that there’s no such thing as too many.
  • If you’re going nostalgic, some old-school bubble lights would be your vibe. Just keep them away from little fingers—they get hot!

 

Scent ideas

Build on the sensory experience of glowing light by adding enchanting seasonal smells. There are lots of holiday room scents available that are spiced with pine, fir, cinnamon and even frankincense and myrrh that you can buy to spritz the place up and please all the noses that enter.

You can also make your holiday room more scent-ilating by tucking cinnamon-scented pine cones into corners or at the backs of your Christmas tree, garlands and wreaths.

A beautiful way to build memories through scent is to keep a simmer pot of your own favorite aromatics, spices and fruit like rosemary, vanilla bean, and lemon on a low and slow cook throughout the day. Keep sweet smells wafting throughout your Christmas room!

Music ideas

Of course, there’s nothing quite like the magic of music to set the mood. There are so many options for putting pleasing sounds into your family’s spirit.

Make a personalized playlist with music from your cultural tradition, your church favorites, nostalgic childhood songs, classics from the classical masters and versions of songs from your favorite soul, blues, pop, rock and country artists. 

If that sounds like a lot of work and you’re of a mind that you already have too much to do, then feel free to let the Hallmark Spotify playlists help you out.

 

No matter what you choose, as long as you play the songs that get your people moving, grooving and dancing together, they’ll feel the spirit of Christmas moving through them.

Looking for ways to surprise friends, neighbors, teachers, seniors, and strangers with holiday kindness? Let us help you with 12 Simple Ways to Spread Holiday Cheer.

Making a Christmas room is an exciting way for you to express your creativity and bring the people you love together for celebrating, having fun and making memories that will last a lifetime. We hope these ideas help you make it happen!

 

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