Christmas Experts

From New York to Texas and everywhere in between, see how the Nation’s Top Designers are adding their keen design style to the Art of Holiday Decorating.

- Jickie Torres

The 11-foot Fraser fir is decorated with ornaments from Christopher Radko and Waterford, and with French Art Nouveau balls. Designer Mary Ellen McCoy included antique cut-crystal prisms, fruits, acorns and pinecones. Believing that no tree is complete without birds, she added gilded birds and peacocks. Golden bows and streamers set off the gilt Renaissance star topper from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

If you’ve ever wondered how your neighbor across the street, the shopkeeper in town or even the design celebrity on TV does Christmas décor their way, you’re not the only one. “A small confession: if a woman can be a Peeping tom, then I am one. But only at Christmastime,” writes design columnist Rose Bennett Gilbert, in the forward to Katherine Kaye and Patricia Hart McMillan’s new book Christmas at Designers’ Homes Across America. “When tree lights begin to sparkle inside my neighbors’ homes, I can’t resist looking in on their holidays, their ways of dressing up for the most colorful and joyous season of the year.”

The McMillans take this idea to the next level in peeking into the homes of some of the season’s most beloved design minds. As they visit with decorators of all ilks, readers learn a variety of lessons and, in some cases, will be inspired with not only decorating advice, but also heartwarming seasonal philosophies to live by.