When you invite family and friends to visit this holiday season, your front walkway and entrance will set the tone for your festivities. Any decorations you display in these areas of your home will serve as the first impression, so why not go all out this year?
In this guide, we are going to look at a variety of fun and festive Christmas walkway ideas that are sure to impress your guests and leave everyone in the holiday spirit. The list includes everything from simple decorations that can be purchased at your local dollar store or thrift shop to large DIY projects and elaborate holiday displays. Whatever your style and budget, we are sure that we have something to inspire your decorating plans!
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Traditional Candlelit Lanterns
If you prefer a more minimalistic or traditional holiday decorating theme, why not go right back to the basics with the classic look of candles and lanterns. Today, we see lanterns being used in a wide variety of different ways, filled with Christmas ornaments, holiday greenery, and other festive pieces. However, this simple decorating scheme requires nothing more than shepherd hooks holding basic holiday lanterns being used as candle holders. If you are concerned about fire risks of live flames, or simply don’t want to take the time to light your lanterns each night, swap the standard pillar candles for LED candles with timers or remotes.
Craft Clay Pot Snowmen
If you’re feeling crafty, here’s a cute option to transfer traditional clay pots into some adorable greeters to welcome your guests. For each snowman, you are going to need 4 clay pots, all of the same size. Paint three of your pots white while painting the 4th pot the desired color for your snowman’s woolen hat. With a glue gun, glue the opening of two white pots together as well as a white pot with your colored pot, before stacking the two pieces together to create the form of your new friend.
Now it’s time to decorate! Paint a cute little face on the top white pot. If you want, you can add a 3D carrot nose or simply paint it on like the other features. Glue a strip of fabric around the seam between the colored pot and the top white pot for the brim of your hat and tie a matching strip for your snowman’s scarf. Finally, glue the felt hands onto the middle white pot and add a row of buttons down the center to complete the look. You can incorporate a single snowman into your walkway or make multiple to help fill out the space. Experiment with different sized pots for larger and smaller snowmen.
Purchase a Lighted Inflatable Archway
One of the easiest ways to welcome guests into your outdoor space with a bold, dramatic gesture is using a lighted inflatable archway. These decorations often look large and impressive; however, they require minimal effort to set up. Simply stake down your archway where you want it to remain for the season, plug it in, and allow the built-in inflation fan to take over. As long as the fan is running, your archway will continue to stand tall. When not in use, simply allow the decoration to settle on the ground until you’re ready to inflate it once again.
Line Your Walk with Oversized Christmas Ornaments
Oversized Christmas ornaments are surprisingly easy to make, and their bright colors add beautifully to the joy and holiday cheer in your outdoor space. For each ornament, you will need a large inflatable ball, a small, round deli container, a length of wire, and a hot glue gun. Inflate the ball fully to the size of your finished ornament. Spray paint your deli container and carefully put two small holes across from one another just above the bottom of the container. This is where you will loop the wire to create the hanger on the top of the ornament. Finally, glue the container with the opening down to the top of your ball and you have an ornament ready for display! These can be hung or stacked on the ground to add a festive touch to your walkway.
String Up Festive Garland
We often associate the traditional holiday garland of foliage and soft white lights with a classic holiday wreath or a pop of color along the front porch. However, this garland can also be incorporated into a beautiful display along your walkway. If you already have a fence already in place along your walk, carefully drape your garland along the fence with some strategically placed red velvet ribbon bows for a beautiful traditional touch. However, if you don’t have a fence, don’t let that stop you! You can still line your walkway with garland using shepherds hooks like those designed to hold hanging plants.
Create Holiday Snow Sculptures
Why spend money on craft supplies when Mother Nature is providing you with what you need for a festive display free of charge? If you live somewhere where that sees enough snow, try your hand at building holiday-themed snow sculptures. Tackle your snow sculptures freehand or use a snow mold to create your fun and festive characters. Add some pops of color by including holiday accessories including scarves, Santa hats, or reindeer antlers to your characters. Worried that sculptures are going to be too difficult? You can always go back to the basics and make a family of snow people to line your walkway.
Paint Your Walkway Stones
While some houses feature walkways made of fancy, decorative stone, others keep it simple with basic patio stones. A standard patio stone may not seem overly exciting but with the holidays coming, they offer the perfect blank canvas to create a one-of-a-kind Christmas display. Sidewalk chalk paint is easy to work with and budget-friendly. To make your temporary paint, you will need equal parts cornstarch and water, food coloring to create your desired paint color, and a plastic container with a lid for storage. This is a fun way to decorate specifically for your holiday party or family Christmas. You can even add names and other personal touches without worrying about how long it’s going to hang around. The paint easily rinses off sidewalks, concrete pavers, and driveways when you’re finished.
Incorporate Holiday Nutcrackers
Most holiday displays feature Santa Claus, reindeer, and snowmen, but those aren’t the only recognizable characters during this festive season. This Christmas, change up your walkway decorations by taking inspiration from holiday nutcrackers. There are many different nutcracker-themed decorations available on the market, including inflatable decorations, garden sakes, wooden cut-outs, and even life-size models. Compliment your nutcrackers with bright lights, festive garland, and other decorative elements.
Create a Dramatic Tunnel of Light
It’s a sight that is usually saved for large corporate and city holiday displays, but you can recreate this look at home easier than you may realize! The market for Christmas lights has grown and evolved considerably over the years. With this growth has come new lighting options including the secret to these beautiful DIY light tunnels – Christmas net lights. Net lights are LED lights that have been strung together in a grid design, making it easier to cover large areas. For your light tunnel, you will need at least two archways to provide the necessary structure. These can be made from wood or PVC pipes. Just be sure to build your arches tall enough to accommodate all your guests! When your structures are in place, carefully drape your net lights over top, securing them to the arches and creating a wall of lights all the way around the outside.
Take a Ride on the DIY Christmas Train
If you have some extra wooden crates laying around your house, this is a great way to use them to build an adorable holiday display. Paint your crates in bright holiday colors matching your decorating theme. You will need one crate for each train car, with an additional crate to build your engine. Cut one of the engine crates in half down the middle and mount it on top of your front crate with the cut edge down, creating the compartment for your holiday conductor. To give your train wheels, add round pieces of wood or plastic plates decorated to look like peppermint candies. You can dress up your train to match with the rest of your walkway display by adding passengers, bags of presents, or other details.
Decorate Existing Lighting
Do you already have outdoor lighting in place along your front walkway? If so, you can decorate these lights to incorporate them into your overall holiday decorating plans. Wrap your light posts with colorful lights or fresh garland while still allowing the lights themselves to continue lighting the way for your guests. They can also be transformed into signposts by adding a holiday sign with a cute festive saying like ‘Santa Stop Here’. Alternatively, if your light posts are large enough, they can be used to support wooden cut-outs of your favorite holiday characters.
Build Eye-Catching Ornament Topiaries
DIY ornament topiaries have been all the rage on social media in recent years, encouraging experienced crafters and those interested in discovering their creative side alike. They are easy to assemble but the finished look is one that will impress your guests, framing you’re the entrance to your walkway or your front door to welcome them in. For each topiary, you will need a large planter, a long wooden dowel, oversized ornaments in a variety of different sizes, a block of floral foam, and evergreen boughs.
To begin, you will need to attach your floral foam to the bottom inside of the planter. Secure your wooden dowel in the middle of the floral foam. You want to be sure that this isn’t going to go anywhere as the dowel will serve as the center support pole holding the topiary together. Arrange your oversized ornaments from largest to smallest, drilling a hole just big enough for the dowel in the top and bottom of each ornament and then sliding the ornaments onto your arrangement. The smallest ornament will not need a hole in the top as it will act as a cap on the top. Arrange the evergreen boughs around the base of the topiary along with a selection of regular-sized Christmas ornaments to conceal the floral foam entirely and you’re ready to put it on display.
Harness the Sun with Solar Cane Lights
Solar cane lights are a series of durable plastic candy canes with stakes on the bottom, designed to line your walkway and provide a festive glow. Rather than adding to your electrical bill, these lights are powered by a small solar panel that can be placed strategically where it will pick up the most sunlight during the day. At night, you have your choice of 8 different lighting modes including flashing, waving, sequential, slow glow, chasing flashing, slow fade, twinkle flashing, and the standard steady on, making it easy to ensure that your new lights will match any aesthetic.
Transform Trees into Giant Holiday Gnomes
Do you have large evergreen trees lining your front walkway? If so, you may be getting tired of wrapping them in lights every year for the holiday season. Here’s a fun way to include your trees in your decorating while making something new and unique. Hang strings of white yarn along the front 1/3 of the tree to create a large beard. Around the top of the beard, wrap a thick piece of red ribbon all the way around the tree and attach a cute gnome nose to the front. Finally, using the same ribbon from before, create a large ribbon bow to put on the top of your tree as the finishing touch. Your giant festive gnome will be a hilarious conversation starter throughout the season.
Assemble Tiered Holiday Planters
Take your festive holiday planters to the next level by creating a fun, tiered design. To do this, you will need two pots of the same size and a block of wood approximately ¾ of the height of the inside of the pot. Place your wood in the bottom of one pot, holding it in place with soil all around the outside to keep it from falling over. Set your second pot on top of the wood. You can now finish filling in soil into the bottom pot as well as filling your second pot. Fill your planter pots to match your decorating style. Some examples include evergreen boughs, poinsettias, or a selection of winter-hardy plants. Incorporate holiday ornaments and fairy lights for some extra holiday flair. You can stick to two planters, one on each side of your walkway to the house, or use multiple evenly spaced along the path.
Combine Hundreds of Ornaments for a Real Statement
This decorating idea is for only the most dedicated Christmas lovers! Start by building a large archway using PVC piping that extends up and over your walkway. If you have a long path leading up to your house, you may choose to build more than one. Cover your archway with foam or several pool noodles (if you’re looking for a more cost-effective solution).
Now it’s time for the holiday magic! For this next step, you will need a large collection of ornaments of different sizes and colors. Starting with your largest ornaments, attach them to the archway one at a time with a hot glue gun, spreading them out across the surface. As you finish each set of ornaments, move to the next size down and continue attaching them building your archway up on top of one another. You can block the ornaments together or mix the colors up. You can also tuck evergreen boughs into the archway to help fill it out.
When you’re finished, you’ll have a Christmas ornament arch that will shock and awe your visitors with the level of work and commitment that you have put into your holiday display. Compliment your arch with a matching ornament wreath or ornament topiaries to pull everything together.
Decorate Traditional Solar Lights
If you have solar lights sitting in your garage or storage shed, why not pull them out and give them a festive makeover? This is a great way to save money by repurposing items that you already have rather than having to purchase new holiday décor. Add a cute little top hat or a knit hat to the top of each light and stickers to the front of the light itself to create a snowman’s face. The best part is that the hat and stickers can be removed after the holidays are over, allowing you to put your lights back out again when the weather warms up as if nothing ever changed. The same approach can be used to create reindeer, with antlers in place of the hat, or even Santa Claus himself.
Create Dramatic Lighting Displays with Hula Hoops
One of the most exciting additions to any holiday display is the bright, colorful lights both indoors and out. However, by putting the same lights up year after year, you might be noticing the magic is fading. This holiday season, try displaying your Christmas lights in a new and creative way. One fun lighting option that you may be interested in trying involves combining LED lights with hula hoops to create large circles of light to accent any space. You can use all soft white lights for a magical winter wonderland aesthetic or embrace your love of holiday color. Try using both adult and children’s hula hoops to add some size variation. These light circles can easily be hung from trees along the sides of your front walk or even secured with garden stakes so that they stand up on their own, creating a decorative fence leading the way to your front door.
Paint Wooden Snowman Garden Stakes
Are you looking for a quick and easy DIY to add a personal touch to your outdoor space? All you need for this project is a collection of wooden garden stakes, acrylic paint, and some scraps of fabric that match your holiday décor. Paint all your stakes completely white and allow them to dry. This next step is the fun part, and a great opportunity to involve the whole family. A couple of inches from the top of your stake, paint your snowman’s face. Get creative with this, giving each of your snowmen their own personality. Add three small circles of black paint below to represent the pieces of coal used as buttons on your snowman. When all the paint has had a chance to dry, use your fabric scraps and a glue gun to add a simple winter hat and a scarf to each snowman and you’re ready to put them out along your front walk.
String Up Snowflakes for a Winter Wonderland
Transform your front walkway into a Winter Wonderland by stringing up snowflakes of different sizes and shapes. Hang large snowflakes on their own or create vertical strings of smaller snowflakes, hanging one after the other. These strings can be displayed along the edge of your porch or hanging from the trees around your front yard, creating the illusion of a holiday blizzard bringing a fresh coat of snow to your outdoor space. Incorporate other snow-themed decorations to add some extra holiday cheer including snowmen or a large decorative sleigh. Do you live in an area that doesn’t see snow during the winter months? Add a blanket of ‘snow’ using white fabric on your front yard.
Share A Message Along the Walk
Share your holiday message with the world, or at least with your guests this season, with the help of your walkway décor. There are several ways that you can work your message into your decorating plans. One of the boldest ways to share your message is to use oversized wooden letters spelling out a simple holiday-inspired word like ‘JOY’ or ‘SNOW’ across your long alongside your walkway. If that isn’t your style, consider adding smaller letters to the front of holiday planters, creating a custom holiday sign, or hanging a fun festive banner where your walkway meets your front entranceway. If you are the type of person that likes changing their holiday decorations up slightly from year to year, consider creating a stockpile of different letters and spelling out a new message each time you set them up.
Paint Holiday-Themed Signs and Markers
Holiday signs are a cute way to add a festive touch to any space. They are also highly versatile, making it easy to incorporate your holiday decorating theme, whatever it may be. For example, your signs could point out various parts of the North Pole, highlight the corners of your Winter Wonderland, direct Santa to your home, or direct the elves around their workshop. Blank wooden signs can often be found at dollar stores and craft stores for a very low cost, making this a budget-friendly project that will elevate your walkway décor to a whole new level of holiday cheer.
String Lights on DIY Pallet Trees
Many companies leave the pallets from their deliveries at the side of the road to be taken out with the garbage. However, for those that enjoy a fun DIY project, these pallets are holiday decorations just waiting to be turned into a holiday treasure. Take your pallet and lay it down on the ground in front of you with the inner support beams vertical and the exterior beams, which will form the branches of your tree, horizontal. Make a mark at the top of the pallet in the center of the middle support beam. Draw a line from that point down to each of the bottom corners. Cut along the two lines that you’ve created, and your Christmas tree will start to take shape.
Paint your festive tree in a color (or colors) to complement the rest of your holiday decorations. Your tree can stand alone or make multiple to create a larger display. Wrap a string of fairy lights around your tree for a little festive glow. You can also add to the larger display by placing decorative presents around the base of the tree.
Assemble Simple Traditional Decorative Planters
Embrace the simplicity of the holiday season by creating festive decorative planters to line your walkway and front porch. These planters are incredibly easy to assemble. All you need is a large pot, evergreen boughs, pinecones, and holiday ornaments. Depending on the size of your pot, you may also want rocks or other objects to fill in the bottom of the pot and weigh it down in the winter winds. Create a base of fresh evergreen covering the opening of the pot and extending out slightly around the pot to give it dimension. Add pinecones and holiday ornaments in and around the evergreen until you’re happy with the result. When the holidays are over, you can repurpose your pots with some beautiful spring flowers.
Repurpose Old Tires to Build Snowmen
Do you have a few old tires sitting around in your garage waiting to be disposed of? Before you take them to the dump, why not use them to add an adorable snowman to greet your visitors as they step onto your front walk? To create the snowman, you will need to stack your tires from largest to smallest. If you are concerned about your snowman being knocked over, consider attaching them to one another. For your snowman’s hat, either fashion a top hat out of smaller tires or add a hat made from another material, depending on your personal preferences.
With white spray paint, carefully paint all the tires that make up your snowman being careful to cover every nook and cranny of the tires. Glue black felt circles onto your snowman for the coal pieces that make up his eyes, mouth, and the buttons along his chest. Add a carrot nose, two sticks for arms, and a brightly colored scarf to finish the look.
Build Candy Cane-Inspired Light Posts
Make your guests feel as though they are walking through the North Pole as they walk up to your house this season by lining your walk with candy-cane-inspired light posts. To create these DIY lights, you will need PVC pipes, garden stakes, spray paint, and solar lights. To keep the cost down, you can find your solar garden stakes for the top at your local dollar store. Cut your PVC piping to the desired height of your light posts. Paint them all completely white and all the paint to dry before using painter’s tape to create a spiral pattern all the way down the pole. Paint your poles red and then carefully remove the painter’s tape to reveal a candy cane design. Attach the garden stakes to the bottom to hold your poles in place and slide your solar lights into the top of the pipe, allowing the top of the light to become the top of your light posts.
