Tips from Monkton Elm Garden & Pet Centre

Top tips for setting up a Christmas display by Christine Edwards, Shop and Till Supervisor at Monkton Elm Garden & Pet Centre:

1. Planning
We start planning for Christmas in the January before and attend various buying shows and events to decide on the trends for the year. We then create mood boards and plans for how our displays will look in-house.

2. Location
The first thing to do is pick where to put your displays up in your shop building. This should be quite near the entrance of the shop to grab customers’ attention from the minute they arrive on-site. Make it the focal point of the available space – there is no point hiding the displays away in a corner where they will go unnoticed by your visitors.

3. Structure
It sounds so simple but build from the base up. It is best to make the main part of the display at eye level or above as this will be the first thing people will see. If you’re using a small Christmas tree then a table would be best to raise it up. This should be covered with a table cloth that fits in with the display colours, even if it is not an essential part of the display. Everything needs to match well and all unsightly boxes/table legs need covering too.

4. Colour scheme
If you have several displays you can have lots of different colour schemes. However, within one display you shouldn’t have more than two or three colours as this could lead to clashing. Traditional Christmas colours tend to be red, green and gold, but other popular ones include purple, lime green and turquoise. We used these colours last year and they were very popular.

5. Christmas tree
The size of this depends on the size of the display space available and the height of the shop. Generally you don’t want the tree to be too tall, as any products near the top will often be missed by the viewer unless you’re making a grand statement related to size. Often a huge Christmas tree makes a good focal point.

6. Products
The colour schemes will need to fit in with the products you are using. Everything in the display needs to be available to buy in-store, so make sure you have plenty of stock to replace anything you use, as these will hopefully be sold, and also to keep the display looking attractive.


Have you created a fabulous display? Email your photos to Fiona at Fiona.Hodge@fav-house.com and we will put them up in our festive display section.