The changing seasons are one of the many things I love about nature. Not only does it give you the perfect opportunity to change up your wardrobe, but your home too. This year, I’ve found some gorgeous trending fall decor ideas that are cheap, easy, and quick to implement.
With a few simple swaps in your living room, you can breathe new life into your home and make it feel as though it’s had a full makeover. And it doesn’t have to cost a fortune either.
Simply changing the color of your cushions, adding a throw in autumn colors, or creating a small seasonal vignette is enough. You can turn your room from a breezy and light summer oasis into a cozy autumnal haven.
How to Switch a Room Over for the Seasons
As an event designer for many years, I learned a few things about decor, and the same rules apply to event spaces as to rooms in your home.
Start with the largest soft piece in the room, which is usually the rug or the sofa throw, because that one swap carries more weight than ten cushion covers.
Swap your pale linen cushions for something in a heavier weave and a warmer tone, fold a wool throw over the arm of the sofa, and if your rug is light and summery, roll it up and put down something with more weight to it, even if that’s just a runner.
Keep your color palette to three tones across the whole room and stop there. Any more and the eye has nowhere to rest, and the colors are competing for your attention, and not in a good way.
Top Tip: Pack your summer cushion covers and throws into one labeled bag and put them where the autumn ones were, then you’ll know exactly where to find them when summer comes around next year.
7 Trending Fall Decor Ideas
These trending fall decor ideas are easy to implement, good for the purse strings, and won’t take forever. Plus some top tips from what I learned as an event designer. I had a great time playing with colors and creating some autumn decor in my living room, so you’re getting a sneak peek into my French country living room.
1. Natural Color Palettes Pulled Straight From the Season
Forget the orange and black Halloween aisle entirely and take your color cues from what’s actually happening outside your window. Burnt orange, burgundy, sage, deep forest green, wheat, camel, chocolate brown. The shades you see on a walk in October.
The key is to make the colors sit together without fighting for airspace. The tacky black and orange that looks like it belongs in the kids’ aisle of Target is never going to look good in your living room.
However, a burnt umber cushion next to a sage throw next to a camel rug is cozy and gives you the fall vibe all season without the tackiness.
Top Tip: pick your palette by taking a photo of a tree or a hedgerow near your home and matching your cushions and throws to the colors in that photo. Nature has already done the color-wheel work for you.
2. Oversized Dried Branch Arrangements
I’m very relieved to see designers moving away from the little resin pumpkin collection on the console table and reaching for height instead. Instead, they’re being replaced with tall floor vases with eucalyptus, dried oak, bleached palm, or feathery pampas.
The trick is scale. A few short stems in a small vase won’t do much and will get lost in the room. You want branches that come up to about chest height when the vase is on the floor, and enough of them that the arrangement has some weight to it. Three to five stems minimum, and let them lean out rather than stand to attention.
Top Tip: forage half of it. A walk down any country lane in October will give you oak, beech, and old hydrangea heads for nothing. Mix the foraged branches with one or two store-bought statement stems and the whole thing looks more natural rather than curated. Much closer to nature and the seasons that way.
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3. Textured Cushions in Natural Fibers
Forget the cutesy polyester cushions with prints of leaves, black cats, and pumpkins. They’re the fastest way to drag a room into tacky territory. This fall, the trend is the opposite: plain cushions in rich fall colors, with the interest coming from the fabric’s texture rather than a printed pattern.
Boucle is everywhere. So is nubby linen, raw silk, chunky knit, and the occasional velvet in a deep tone like burgundy or forest green.
Mix the textures on the same sofa. A boucle cushion next to a linen one next to a chunky knit, all in the same tonal family, gives you depth without a single pattern in sight.
Top Tip: Buy cushion covers rather than whole cushions and keep the inner pads from summer. You save a fortune.
4. The Styled Coffee Table Vignette
It’s so easy to make your coffee table the star of the autumn-inspired show, as it takes very little effort but gives a lot in return. The trick is not to overload it; otherwise, it becomes a cluttered mess.
A small stack of hardback books with a chunky pillar candle and one organic object on top is enough. A gourd, a small bowl of acorns, a single dried hydrangea head in a short vase give a subtle nod to the season rather than being screamingly obvious and tacky.
Three items, odd numbers, varying heights. The books give you the base, the candle gives you the height, and the organic piece gives you the fall touch without screaming pumpkin spice at anyone.
Keep plenty of empty space around the group so the room still has somewhere to put a mug of tea.
Top Tip: turn the books so the spines face away if the covers are too modern or too branded; otherwise, they take over.
5. Layered Lamplight Instead of the Big Light
The biggest shift in fall living rooms this year has nothing to do with color or cushions. It’s lighting. The overhead light is off, and three or four smaller lamps are on around the room instead, at different heights, with warm bulbs.
I’ve always thought the overhead light gives off a horrible light, as there is never anything warm or inviting about it. In our home, we never use the overhead lights and always opt for lamps.
A table lamp on the side table, a floor lamp behind the sofa, a small picture light, or a candle-style lamp on the bookshelf. The room feels smaller, warmer, and more intimate the moment you flick the big light off.
Top Tip: Check the bulbs you’ve already got. Swap them for warm white bulbs between 2700K and 3000K, and if you can, get LEDs as they’re much kinder on the environment.
6. A Proper Wool Throw as the Centerpiece
A beautiful wool throw folded over the arm of the sofa is the easiest and most useful piece you can bring into a living room for fall. Designers call it a capsule piece, meaning it lasts from October through March and never looks out of place.
Always go with natural fibers wherever you can if you want to avoid the cliché look. What you’re looking for is wool, linen, or organic cotton for your throws.
Natural fibers have that nubby, chunky texture that polyester just can’t fake, and they last for years rather than pilling after one winter.
A plain cream wool throw in a chunky weave does more for a room than three polyester throws in bright patterns.
Top Tip: fold it in thirds lengthways and drape it over the arm so one tasseled end hangs down.
7. Real Pumpkins and Gourds, Used Sparingly
Hear me out on this one. I know I said I’m relieved to wave goodbye to the cliché pumpkin, but I meant the plastic fake ones. Real pumpkins are back in, and faux ones are out.
A cluster of three small heirloom pumpkins on the hearth, or a single pale blue-gray pumpkin on a stack of books on the coffee table, does more for a room than a whole bowl of resin ones.
The mistake most people make is going overboard. Pick two or three spots in the whole room and leave the rest alone.
The empty space around each grouping makes the ones you do use look intentional, not like a Halloween store exploded in your living room.
Top Tip: Look for the unusual varieties at the farmers market, not the supermarket. The pale blue-gray Jarrahdale, the warty Knucklehead with its bright orange skin and dark green to orange bumps, the tiny white Baby Boo.
Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and is not professional advice. It may contain affiliate links. Please see our full Editorial Policy for details.
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Kylie Lang is a nationally syndicated travel journalist with bylines on the Associated Press Wire & more, a lifestyle writer, and the founder and editor of Your Lifestyle Library (yourlifestylelibrary.com). She holds a BA (Honours) in History from the University of Kent and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers.