By Kate Longley • Kate Longley Designs
People sometimes assume that designers do something dramatic to their homes for the holidays.
A complete transformation. New everything. The kind of reveal you see in a magazine spread where the house looks entirely different from one month to the next.
What I do is much quieter than that. And I find that the quieter changes are almost always the ones that feel the most right.
The first thing I tend to change in my own home in Scottsdale is the tables.
Not the dining table necessarily. I mean the surfaces in the rooms where people gather. The coffee table. The console. The little table by the front door. I’ll clear them almost completely and reset them with just a few things that feel right for the season. A bowl of something from outside. A stack of books I want to read over the holidays. An object I love that usually lives somewhere else in the house.
It’s a small shift, but it changes the feeling of a room more than I’d expect every time I do it. Those surfaces set the tone. When they feel considered, the whole room tends to follow.
The second thing I love doing is bringing the outside in.
Arizona has such beautiful things growing in October and November that it feels almost wasteful not to use them. Dried grass. Branches with interesting structure. A single succulent stem in a vessel on its own. Nothing elaborate. Just a few things from outside placed simply somewhere inside.
There’s something about natural material in a home during the holidays that feels grounding rather than decorative. It connects the house to where it is, which in the desert this time of year is a genuinely lovely place to be.
The third thing is scent, which I think people underestimate.
A home that smells right for the season feels festive before you’ve even registered why. A real candle in something warm and woody. Fresh greenery if you’re using it anywhere. Something simmering in the kitchen if people are coming over. It’s one of those things that guests rarely comment on directly but always seem to feel. The house just has a different quality when you walk in.
The last thing I do is rotate a few pieces of art.
Things that feel a little warmer and more intimate than what’s up the rest of the year. A small drawing. A photograph that means something. It makes the rooms feel more personal somehow, more like somewhere someone lives and loves, which is exactly the feeling you want when the house is full of people.
None of what I’ve described costs very much or takes very long. It’s mostly just a little attention paid in the right direction before the season arrives rather than after.
And I find that’s really all a home needs to feel ready.
If you’re thinking about a bigger project going into the new year, I’d love to be part of that conversation. I work with a small number of clients at a time, and I’m thoughtful about fit.
KATE LONGLEY DESIGNS
Paradise Valley · Scottsdale, Arizona