Every holiday season, people are concerned about decorating their houses with indoor Christmas lights. They lose their minds as they dress and drape every gutter, window, and roof tile with holiday ornaments.

These houses end up being an exquisite vision and spectators assume that the magic is carried throughout the home’s interior. But have you ever stepped inside a contest-winning house and looked around? I have, and it broke my heart.

Aside from a Christmas tree, all the Christmas lights are dedicated to the exterior of their home. The inside is indistinguishable from how a house looks every other day of the year.!

Why spend so much effort making your house look like Disneyland when the inside is going to look like…well, just some house?

Don’t you want to take that spirit indoors with you? Of course you do. However, I understand your hesitation. Decorating the outside of a house is easy: it takes effort to put the lights up, but you have to do very little creative thinking to get it done right.

Inside your home is a different ball game. You have to measure out new logistics of where the Christmas lights can go, if they fit in the theme of room, and if they work with the existing light that you already have. That’s where we come in.

Here are some creative interior decoration ideas that you can accomplish with nothing more than indoor Christmas lights.

 

 Image Courtesy of Storeyland’s Flickr page

Indoor Christmas Lights and Getting It Right the First Time!

A Quick Warning: We suggest that all of your indoor Christmas lights be LED (light-emitting diode) lights. Not only do LED lights use less energy and result in lower bills, but they also create very little heat and minimize the risk of overheating your outlets.

Transform Your Bead Curtain to a Lights Curtain: Bead curtains are commonly used to create walls doors blocking off space. They can be used for small areas, like your closet or washing room, or they can replace your bedroom door entirely. If you have any bead curtains in your, consider replacing it with an indoor Christmas lights curtain. Simply put together different strands of lights so they fill the width of the doorway. Divide your living space not by walls, but by relaxing beams.

 

 Image Courtesy of Sean Loyless’ Flickr page

Bordered Ceiling: You can give a hint of magic to your entire room by using this method. This is very much like hanging up lights on the outside of your house. All you need to do is apply some small nails to each ceiling corner of your room. Drape lights across these nails so the ceiling of your room is bordered. Plug in the lights and you’ll see your room has been eclipsed by a new shade.

When bordering walls, I like to choose a relaxing color that I could fall asleep to. Some nights, you just want to leave them on and doze off gazing at them. I choose blue to do this trick. White & clear are a little too bright and resemble my actual bedroom lights too much. Red is a stress-inducing color that you don’t want to bring to your bedroom. Make your room a soothing blue like a calm sea reflecting peaceful skies.

Dressed Floor Molds: You can apply the same basic idea from the bordered ceiling to your floor by resting lights across the molding at the bottom of the walls (nails not recommended or necessary).

Where the bordered walls serve best in a room where people sit or lay down, the dressed floor molds do well in a hallway. Hallways usually have very little furniture or obstacles to hide away the full light’s pattern. If you were to put the dressed floor molds in your living room or bedroom, it wouldn’t be as noticeable due to the bed, furniture, and entertainment systems that take up all that lower wall space.

 Image Courtesy of Jose Manuel Rios Valiente’s Flickr page

Windows: Windows are the ultimate 2-for-1 with indoor Christmas lights. By draping them either across your windowsill or around the actual window from inside, you are decorating the interior of your house while emitting some extra glow that can be seen from the street. Some may call this cheating when it comes to the neighborhood house-decorating contests. I just call it intelligent.

The best windows to trim are in the kitchen or dining room. Not only because the outside traffic will see them, but the kitchen doesn’t offer much room for decorations. The kitchen is filled with appliances and drawers that are constantly being used. The window is essentially the only place that can be decorated. Make your cooking space shine with twinkling lights.

 Image Courtesy of Cyndi Calhoun’s Flickr page

Plants and Trees: As much as we all want it, you can’t have a Christmas tree in every single room of your house. However, if you have plants or trees with strong branches, hanging lights will work well with them. You can either use standard green LED lights to enhance the green leaves, or you can buy specialty glowing ornaments.

Mason Jar Candle Effect: There is a light that never goes out, and it looks a lot like a candle. Wherever you place candles in your home, you can now replace them by stuffing a few lights inside of an opaque mason jar to create a lighted effect. Put three or four empty mason jars next to each other and spread light strands equally between each one. Put these candles near an outlet switch so the rest of the light isn’t obviously dragging across the room.

Makeshift Chandelier: If you want to go a step above just putting lights on an existing chandelier, you can do the cavalier thing and make a chandelier yourself! You will construct this out of chicken coop fencing. Then you will be wrapping the lights inside the fencing while leaving the male plug exposed for an easy plug-in. This project is a little more advanced, but recommended for someone who’s feeling crafty.

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