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 these Easter decoration ideas for the home are built around that constraint. Decorations that go up quickly, come down quickly and, packed away dry and undamaged, can come out again next Easter.
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.
What are traditional Easter decorations?
Most traditional Easter decorations in Britain come from two places: the church calendar and the arrival of spring. If you want a scheme that reads as Easter rather than simply as spring, pick from these.
- Eggs. The most familiar symbol of all. As the Church of England's guide to Lent, Holy Week and Easter puts it, the eggs given at Easter represent new life.
- Palm crosses. Churches mark Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, with small crosses made from palm leaves.
- An Easter garden. A small scene of moss, stones and spring flowers around an empty tomb, which some churches make and bless. If you make one at home, give it a tray of its own, away from anything made of paper: the moss needs to stay damp.
- Spring flowers. Daffodils, tulips and white lilies. If you have a cat, leave the lilies out: the PDSA warns that lilies are extremely poisonous to cats, every part of the plant including the pollen.
- Hares, rabbits, chicks and lambs. The animals of spring, which is why so many Easter decorations have ears.
- Bare branches hung with eggs. The Easter tree, below.
The Easter tree
An Easter tree, known in German as an Ostereierbaum (an Easter egg tree), 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 all good choices. Anything with an interesting silhouette will do: 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, there is no fixed rule. Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, is a natural day to put the tree up, and it can come down once the Easter weekend is over. 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 paper mâché Easter eggs come in hanging sets, and so do five of our honeycomb Easter decoration sets; both are made by hand. The honeycomb pieces contain magnets, so if you have young children or pets, stand the tree where they cannot reach it.
Easter table decorations
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 paper mâché 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, which gives the centre of the table height without blocking anyone's view of the person opposite. They contain magnets, so if young children will be at the table, choose the flowers and put the bunnies on a high shelf instead.
For each place setting, one small object on the napkin does more than an elaborate arrangement. A single paper mâché 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 paper in a honeycomb structure. Closed, it lies completely flat; opened, it fans out into a full three-dimensional shape, the same principle as a honeycomb tissue paper ball, but cut into a form. Ours are made by hand, and every set contains magnets. On the tabletop sets, hidden magnets snap together to hold the opened shape, so the mechanism stays out of sight.
The practical consequence is storage. When Easter is over, each piece folds back to flat; on the tabletop sets, you release the magnets first. A folded set fits in a drawer rather than a box in the loft, and stored flat and dry, if nothing is torn or crushed, it can come out again next Easter. That is most of the reason we sell them.
Our hanging sets have a loop or string on every piece, for a tree, a garland or a window. The tabletop sets stand on their own, for a table, a shelf or a mantelpiece.
Safety: our honeycomb decorations contain magnets. They are decorations, not toys. Keep them out of reach of young children and pets, and if a magnet is swallowed, get medical help straight away. The government's Office for Product Safety and Standards advises that a child who may have swallowed magnets should go straight to A&E.
Easter decoration ideas for adults
Easter decorating does not have to look like a children's party. If the house is all grown-ups, or you simply want something quieter, these work well.
- Bare branches and one kind of egg. A jug of twigs hung with eggs in one or two colours reads as deliberate in a way that every pastel at once does not.
- A neutral honeycomb set. The olive green and cream honeycomb eggs sit quietly against bare wood and a white wall.
- Three matching pieces in a row. The three ivory honeycomb bunnies are all the same size and colour, so along a shelf or mantelpiece they read as one calm object rather than three ornaments. Both honeycomb sets contain magnets: keep them where young children and pets cannot reach.
- Nothing chocolate on display. Keep the eggs you eat in a cupboard and the eggs you look at on the table. It is the quickest way to make a room look less like a party.
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, oatmeal 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 by their loops from a curtain pole or the handle of a window catch. Free, and it dresses a whole window. Pick a window that does not run with condensation: paper does not like damp.
- Fill a paper mâché bowl with paper mâché eggs and leave it on the hall table. Our egg sets, such as the five-egg gingham and pink set, look as good grouped in a bowl as hung on a branch. Our paper mâché bowls are made by hand in Jaipur from recycled paper and are light to lift, but they are not waterproof, so keep them to dry things. There is more on what to put in a decorative bowl, and what to keep out of it.
- Tie one paper mâché egg to each napkin with garden twine instead of buying napkin rings.
- Group three vases of a single flower rather than one mixed arrangement.
- Dress the inside of the front door with one small hanging decoration rather than a wreath outside. Paper decorations belong indoors, out of the rain, and the inside of the door is the surface everyone sees on the way out 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, in a drawer young children cannot open, because of the magnets. Paper mâché eggs want a lidded box, kept somewhere dry rather than in a loft, which is the same rule that runs through how to look after paper mâché all year. Packed away dry, and if nothing is torn or crushed, the eggs and the honeycomb pieces can come out again next Easter.
We have written the full method, material by material, in our guide to how to store Easter decorations.
If you are trying to work out how much you need for a particular table, ask us by email or WhatsApp.
