How to Pick the Best Christmas Table Centerpieces
8th Dec 2025
Looking for Christmas table centerpiece ideas, because is it really the holiday season if the house isn’t decorated? We don’t think so.
Between choosing the perfect tree, hanging ornaments and stockings, and painting nutcrackers, a lot goes into prepping a house for Christmas. In all the rush of the holiday season, one often-overlooked step is selecting the perfect flowers for the dinner table.
Although many people envision a living room with a tree and presents when Christmas is mentioned, Christmas dinner is where many of the memories are made. And the colors, smells, and elegance of a floral centerpiece are exactly what you need to cement all those memories for years to come.
Want to elevate the holiday spirit in your house with a beautiful Christmas table centerpiece? Read on for all the tips and tricks you’ll need to pick an arrangement that you and your loved ones will remember forever.
Fields of Europe Christmas Flowers
Choosing Your Theme
While just about any Christmas centerpiece you find will be pretty and festive, the mood and style of each piece can vary widely.
Consider the other Christmas decorations in your house. Do you use lots of traditional themes — with bright reds and greens, and pictures of Santa and his elves? If that’s the case, then you probably shouldn’t choose a modern arrangement with blues and silvers.
Only you can know the theme you want to aim for with your Christmas decorations. To help you understand what your home best aligns with, here are a few examples of popular themes and the common colors and materials they use:
- Traditional holiday themes
- Evergreen, red roses, holly, pinecones
- Modern and minimalist
- Neutral palettes, metallic accents, clean lines
- Rustic and natural
- Dried oranges, cinnamon sticks, winter greenery
Be sure to take your time deciding on a theme. This step is hard to go back on once you’ve taken it. And picking the wrong theme or not committing firmly enough to one specific theme can turn a holiday decorating plan into an unorganized, ugly mess.
Finding the Right Flowers and Accents
Choosing flowers can be one of the most fun and rewarding parts of planning an arrangement. And if you know what colors you want, this step is often the easiest.
Four main varieties of flowers appear in most Christmas arrangements. They are amaryllis, poinsettias, roses, and carnations. All four of these have many color variations, but each is also available in the traditional Christmas colors of red and white.
Choosing the flowers for your centerpiece is as easy as deciding which of the four you like most, what color you want, and your price range. You should be able to find a color you like for any of the listed flowers, but they can vary widely in price; with carnations usually falling on the cheaper end, roses being more expensive, and amaryllis and poinsettias falling in the middle.
While the flowers will often be the same for any Christmas setting, the accents are where you can customize the arrangement to fit your decorating theme. The options for accents are practically limitless, with florists curating their own catalogs of different plants and decorations to accompany the flowers. However, a few accents you’re likely to find anywhere are evergreen branches, pine cones, red berries, candles, Christmas ornaments, and ribbons.
If all of these options feel overwhelming, remember that you aren’t responsible for assembling the final product. You only need to decide on a flower, a color, and an accent, and your florist can come up with ideas from there.
Putting on the Finishing Touches
Now that you have a theme to shoot for and you know what will go into it, it’s time to hammer out the final details.
The most important last step is to decide on the arrangement’s size and shape. This will likely come down to the size of your table and the seating positions around it. Remember that you’ll want room around the arrangement to hold plates and dishes, and that your guests will need to be able to see each other over it.
Traditional Christmas Centerpiece
Speaking of dishes, matching the arrangement to the dishware is an easy step to forget. Choose the plates, cups, and serving dishes you’ll use, and be sure none of the colors or textures clash with the design of your centerpiece.
Conclusion
Once you’ve considered all these factors and conveyed them to your florist, the florist should have everything they need to assemble the arrangement you’ve been dreaming of. Pat yourself on the back, set the table, and sip a tall glass of eggnog as you admire a job well done.
And if you want to order a centerpiece in the Pittsburgh area, consider Gidas Flowers. We offer a wide selection of beautiful, festive Christmas arrangements, along with talented florists who can accommodate all of your customization needs.