You can hang the garland, fluff the pillows, light the candles, and still feel like something’s off. The house looks fine. Maybe even beautiful. But it doesn’t feel festive. It feels staged. Like you’re hosting inside a set rather than a home. If you’re reading this with less than 24hrs before the guests arrive, you may be out of time to redecorate, but you’re not out of options.
Why Decorating Isn’t What Makes a Home Feel Festive
Mariana Ortiz, our in-house designer, doesn’t decorate for Christmas.
That might sound counterintuitive, especially considering December is spent helping clients prepare their homes for holiday gatherings. But for her, festivity isn’t about seasonal objects, it’s about whether a space invites people to stay.
“I’m not a big fan of Christmas decorations,” she says. “Unless they’re really attached to the family.”
What Mariana is a fan of is a floor lamp in the corner where the family gathers for their favorite holiday pastime. Walnut wood around the home. Brass fixtures that add a touch of character. Very low, very warm lighting. Her version of the holidays is one where you want to take your shoes off, relax, and change your travel plans to stay another day or two.
Growing up in Medellin, Colombia, holiday gatherings for her didn’t mean jack frost and the heat miser. It was visiting everyone’s homes. The one who hosts the most people often has the biggest house. And when you went, it wasn’t to stare at someone’s tree, it was to spend time with those you love. You’d go because you knew warmth was there, memories could be made there, and you wouldn’t want to leave early. Those feelings aren’t because of what you add to a room once a year. It comes from the room itself.
And if you’re reading this on Christmas Eve realizing your space doesn’t feel “ready,” you might be too late to redecorate, but you’re not too late to fix it.
Why Ambiance Matters More Than Seasonal Add-Ons
Here’s the thing about engineering and ambiance
Mariana came to design through engineering, product design specifically, with a Bachelor's Degree in Product Design Engineering from EAFIT University in Medellin, Colombia and a certificate as a Yacht Design Master from Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin, Italy. She’s designed everything from toys, furniture, and cars, to yacht interiors and now residential spaces. Because of her engineering background she thinks about the function of spaces and not just its in season aesthetic appeal. A few questions she asks first:
- What will this space be used for?
- How will it be used?
- How will people actually function in this space?
How an Engineering Mindset Shapes Holiday Spaces
“This is the kind of thinking that defines the area and the focal points of the house,” says Mariana. “And they let you know what you’re building the ambiance around.” If people are gravitating around the TV, the lighting and layout needs to account for that. If they’re gathering in the kitchen naturally, that’s where the ambiance needs to anchor. If they’re anything like Colombian households and they’re doing a lot of dancing, the floors need to handle it and the fabrics need to be mess-resistant.
Function Comes Before Feeling
Think function first, then you build your ambiance around the function.
This is the opposite of how people are usually decorating around the holidays. They start with the aesthetic choices like a Christmas tree, some garland, a centerpiece, and then try to make the room work around it. For Mariana, she starts with how people will actually use the space during the holidays and then creates the feeling around that.
And the fastest way to create that feeling, the thing that shifts mood more than anything else, is lighting.
“Changing the lighting can completely shift the mood in your home. Not adding a bunch of color changing lights. Not stringing together a bunch of little lights. Actually changing or adjusting the lights you already have,” says Mariana.
Holiday Ambiance, According to Mariana
It’s all about the feeling. You don’t want your home to feel like a department store exploded inside of it. You don’t need to hang a bunch of things or plug a bunch of things in. Ambiance is all about the feeling the space creates and not the decorations you add to it.
This is especially true if you’re hosting. If people are coming over and the space feels off, whether it's too bright, too cold, too formulaic, they’ll notice. They might not tell you they do directly but their behavior will.
“The ideal setup for me has at least a floor lamp in a corner that the family can’t help but to gather around.” Which makes sense because the lamp creates a focal point that attracts people to each other whereas a Christmas tree attracts people to the objects underneath it.
If You’re Making Last-Minute Changes
If you’re reading this with 24hrs or less until people arrive and your space doesn’t feel right, here’s what Mariana would tell you to focus on:
Switch to Warm Lighting
Don’t add more lights. Just change the ones you have. Swap cool white bulbs for warm ones. If you have dimmers, use them. The goal is low, warm, layered light. Think multiple sources as different heights but all warm-toned and dimmable if you can manage. “Your lighting needs to be consistent if you want that smooth transition feel,” says Mariana. If the living room is warm and golden but the kitchen is cool and bright, people will unconsciously stay away from the kitchen and you break the flow from one room to the next.
Dim Everything you Can
If you have dimmers, use them. Lower than you think you should even. The goal is ambiance and not task lighting. If you don’t have dimmers, you can cheat the feel by unplugging half the bulbs in a multi-bulb fixture, use 40-watt bulbs instead of 60, or find ways to reduce the light level without reducing the number of sources.
Light The Corners, Not the Center
Put light sources at the edges of the room. You want lighting on side tables, in corners, and even the floor (there’s always room for a Razu). But not in the center. Center lighting alone flattens a space. Edge lighting gives it layers and dimension.
Designing a Home That Feels Right All Year
At the end of the interview Mariana said her entire approach can be summed up into “Put your money into something that’ll last and that will be worth it for more than thirty days.” For her, holiday ambiance isn’t just about Christmas, it’s about the feeling of comfort, togetherness, gatherings, warmth, and building a home that feels good year-round.
Holiday panic usually happens because your space didn’t feel right to begin with and you tried to fix that problem by throwing a bunch of decorations at it. When the lighting is wrong, the materials and finishes are cheap, or the layout doesn’t support connectivity, that only becomes more obvious as guests arrive. That requires a foundational fix, not a decorative one.
Choose lighting that creates ambiance, materials that age well, and layouts that support how you and others will actually use the space. This way, when the holidays come back around, you don’t need to do much because the space is already doing the work for you. You can just turn on the lamps and let the space do what it’s been designed to do.