Easter decorating has a particular problem: the season is short. Christmas justifies a loft full of boxes because the decorations are up for a month and everyone expects them. Easter is a long weekend and a couple of weeks either side, which makes anyone sensible reluctant to buy a lot of things that will sit unused for the other fifty weeks.
So this is a guide built around that constraint. Decorations that go up quickly, come down quickly, store flat, and come out again next year.
Start with one focal point, not five
The most common Easter decorating mistake is spreading a small amount of decoration thinly across a whole house, so nothing quite registers. Pick one place and do it properly.
In most homes the strongest candidate is the dining table, because it is where people actually sit down over the weekend. After that: the hall, which everyone walks through, or the mantelpiece if you have one. A single well-dressed surface reads as a decorated home. Three half-dressed ones read as clutter.
The Easter tree
An Easter tree — the German Ostereierbaum, now thoroughly at home in Britain — is the most efficient decoration of the season: one object, high visual return, and it costs nothing if you have a garden.
- Cut some bare branches. Pussy willow, birch, hazel or forsythia are traditional. Anything with an interesting silhouette works — the branches are the structure, not the decoration.
- Weight the base. A heavy jug or a vase part-filled with stones or dry sand. Hanging decorations are light, but branches are top-heavy and a vase that tips once will tip again.
- Hang from the tips. Decorations placed near the ends of branches move slightly in the room's air and catch the light. Anything hung close to the trunk disappears into the tangle.
- Vary the height. Aim for an uneven spread rather than a neat line. Odd numbers per branch, staggered depths.
On timing: most people put an Easter tree up at the start of Holy Week and take it down after Easter Monday, though if you have cut forsythia or pussy willow you may want it up earlier, while the branches are still doing something.
Anything with a hanging loop goes straight on to a branch without any fiddling. Our honeycomb decorations and paper mâché Easter eggs both come in hanging sets.
The table
An Easter table wants height in the middle and something small at each place. That is the whole formula.
For the centre, you have three workable options. A low bowl of dyed or speckled eggs. A jug of daffodils or tulips, cut short so people can see across the table. Or a tabletop decoration with some structure to it — the tabletop honeycomb bunnies stand on their own base, which means the centre of the table has height without blocking anyone's view of the person opposite.
For each place setting, one small object on the napkin does more than an elaborate arrangement. A single egg, a sprig of something green, a name card. Guests pick these up and turn them over, so it is worth them being nice to hold.
Leave room for food. The most beautifully dressed Easter table is useless if the lamb has nowhere to go. Decorate the centre line and the place settings, and keep the space between them clear.
What honeycomb decorations actually are
Honeycomb is worth explaining, because it is a paper craft a lot of people know by sight without knowing by name.
A honeycomb decoration is made from many layers of paper, cut and joined so that the piece opens out from completely flat into a full three-dimensional shape — the same principle as a honeycomb tissue paper ball, but cut into a form. Ours use premium paper, with hidden magnets holding the shape open so the mechanism stays out of sight.
The practical consequence is storage. When Easter is over, release the magnets and the decoration folds back to flat. A folded set stores flat in a drawer rather than a box in the loft. They are reusable, which is the entire reason we sell them.
Hanging pieces have a loop. Tabletop pieces stand on their own base. Some sets include both, so one purchase can dress a tree and a table.
Colour: pick a narrow palette
Easter has a default palette of every pastel at once, and it is the reason a lot of Easter decorating looks like a children's party regardless of who lives there.
Choose two or three colours and hold the line. Some combinations that work in an ordinary British sitting room:
- Pale blue and white, with bare wood. Cool, quiet, and it suits a grey sofa.
- Yellow and green only. Daffodil-led, and the most seasonal-feeling of the lot.
- Warm neutrals with a single accent. Cream, stone and paper tones, with one clear colour repeated across the room — one strong pink, and nothing else competing.
- Full multicolour, deliberately. If you have children, do not fight it. Just make it consistent: bright everything, everywhere, rather than half-bright and half-tasteful.
Whichever you pick, repeat it at least three times across the room. A colour used once is an accident; used three times it is a scheme.
Small ideas that take five minutes
- Hang two or three decorations from a curtain pole or the handle of a window catch. Free, and it dresses a whole window.
- Fill a decorative bowl with eggs and leave it on the hall table. Our paper mâché bowls take dry contents like eggs and dried flowers happily.
- Tie one decoration to a napkin with garden twine instead of buying napkin rings.
- Group three vases of a single flower rather than one mixed arrangement.
- Dress the front door with a small hanging decoration rather than a full wreath — it is the surface most guests see first and the one most often forgotten.
Taking it all down
Decide where things live before you put them up. Honeycomb pieces fold flat, so keep an envelope or a shallow box labelled and to hand; paper mâché eggs want a lidded box with the loops untangled, kept somewhere dry rather than in a loft. Ten minutes of care in April is the difference between decorations you use for years and decorations you replace.
We have written the full method here: how to store Easter decorations so they survive to next year.
Browse the honeycomb decorations and the Easter eggs, or ask us if you are trying to work out how much you need for a particular table.