Festive tablescapes for a Dubai Christmas
Ten Christmas tables worth sitting down at, and the pieces that make them work in warm light.
The Christmas table is where the day actually happens. The presents are over by nine; the table lasts until someone falls asleep on it.
It is also, we think, the most rewarding thing in a house to style for Christmas. You don’t need a new tree or a new sofa. You need a cloth, some greenery, more candles than seems sensible and an idea of what you want the table to feel like. Festive tablescapes are mostly a question of deciding that feeling before you start putting things down.
We lay a table in The Tree every season, and we have learned a fair amount about what makes one look warm in a photograph and what just looks busy. So this is a round-up of ten Christmas table ideas we love, from the full red-and-tartan tradition to something pared back with linen and a bowl of clementines, and the pieces that make each one work.
One Dubai note before we start. December is the one month of the year when you can lay a Christmas table outside without anyone melting, so several of these work as well on a terrace as they do in a dining room.
Creating festive tablescapes: the pieces you need
Every table below is built from the same short list. Change the colours and the quantities and you have a different table; the pieces stay the same. Buy the basics once, in colours you like, and you can lay a new table every year for very little.
A cloth or a runner. Crumpled natural linen for anything relaxed, a crisp white cloth for anything formal, a check or tartan if you want the table to do the talking. Iron it or don’t, but decide which, because half-ironed linen looks like an accident.
Greenery. Cedar, fir, eucalyptus or olive, laid straight down the middle of the table. Dubai’s flower markets and supermarkets sell cut greenery through December, and a few branches go a surprisingly long way.
Candles. Tall tapers for height, pillars and tea lights for glow. At the studio every candle is LED, because children and open flames are a poor combination; at home, do whatever your insurance and your youngest allow.
Napkins, tied. The quickest way to make a table look finished. A strip of ribbon, a sprig of rosemary or a length of velvet around each one does more than any napkin ring.
Ribbon. Velvet in deep green or burgundy, tartan, or plain silk. You need about a metre per place setting, and it can go around napkins, cutlery, candlesticks and chair backs.
Something that shines. Brass candlesticks, gold cutlery, glass baubles scattered along the runner. A little metal catches candlelight and makes the whole table glow in photographs.
Fruit. Clementines, pomegranates and figs look festive, smell like Christmas and get eaten, which is more than can be said for most table decorations.
Glassware. Coloured glass, green or blue, is one of the easiest ways to give a white table some character. Mix it with clear if you don’t have a full set.
Crackers and place cards. Children love their names written down. A folded card with a name in handwriting tells everyone the table was laid for them.
A plan for the children’s end. Something to do, something to eat that isn’t the main course, and nothing breakable within arm’s reach.
Table 01
Red candles and tartan napkins
The classic, and a classic for a reason. A white cloth, tall red tapers in white holders, red napkins tied with a tartan ribbon and a jug of greenery in the middle. It reads as Christmas from across the room, and it photographs beautifully because the red is broken up by so much white.
The detail that makes this one work is repetition: the same red in the candles, the napkins and the berries. Pick one red and use it three times, and a table looks planned rather than collected.
Table 02
Buffalo check for a long, relaxed lunch
If your Christmas lunch tends to last until dinner, this is the table for it. A red and black check cloth, slate-grey plates, napkins held with a simple ring and a mix of green and red candles on silver sticks. It is relaxed enough for children to climb onto chairs, and it doesn’t show every spill.
The greenery here is doing a lot: silvery leaves, small frosted trees and a jug of red berries soften all that pattern. Without them, check can look like a picnic.
Table 03
Brass candlesticks and velvet ribbon
For the table that wants to feel like an occasion. Tall ivory candles in brass sticks, each one tied at the base with a length of burgundy velvet ribbon, and the same ribbon wrapped around every napkin with a sprig of pine and a pine cone tucked in. It is one small idea repeated all the way down the table, and that repetition is what makes it look considered.
Lay the napkins last, just before everyone sits down, so the pine stays fresh and the velvet stays neat. Brass needs nothing more than a quick polish the night before, and it catches every candle on the table.
Table 04
Pared-back linen and clementines
Not everyone wants red. A crumpled linen runner on a bare wooden table, slim white candles, a bowl of clementines and a strand of warm white lights is one of the prettiest tables we know, and one of the cheapest.
This is also the table that works best outside on a Dubai terrace in December, when the evenings are cool and the light goes gold around five. Add a blanket over each chair back and it becomes the place everyone stays.
Table 05
Ivory and gold
Ivory napkins, gold-rimmed glass plates and gold cutlery, with a single sprig of green on each setting. It is quiet, it is elegant, and it will suit every other thing in the room because there is almost no colour in it at all.
This is the table for families whose Christmas also has to look good in New Year photographs, and for anyone who likes one set of things that works for every celebration. Fold the napkins the same way at every place; with this little colour, neatness is the decoration.
Table 06
Let the children lay it
If you do only one thing, do this. Give the children one job at the table: tucking a sprig of pine into every napkin, putting out the name cards, or deciding who sits where. It takes them twenty minutes, it keeps them out from under your feet while the lunch is cooking, and they will be proud of that table for the rest of the day.
Pine sprigs, a little ribbon and a bowl of pine cones are all they need. The results will be slightly uneven, which is exactly how a family table should look.
Table 07
The table we laid last Christmas
A round table in a long white cloth, clear glasses by the dozen, pink linen napkins tied with burgundy velvet and a sprig of pine, brass candlesticks and a chocolate bundt cake sitting on a nest of greenery. We wanted a table that looked like a family was about to sit down to it, and for most of last season a family was.
The trick is height. Tall candles and a cake raised on greenery give the eye somewhere to go, while everything else stays low so people can see each other across the table. On other days we swapped in teal goblets, which is the easiest way we know to stop a white table looking like a Christmas card.
Table 08
Pudding, served at the table
The moment everyone remembers is rarely the main course. It is the chocolate cake arriving, or the pudding being lit, or a present being opened between courses. Leave room for it: a cake stand in the middle of the table, pudding plates already set, and a clear space where the thing that matters can land.
For photographs, a pudding on the table gives children something to reach for, which is how you get the picture of a small hand going for the cake.
Table 09
A table for making things
Christmas Eve, in many houses, is a table covered in flour and icing sugar rather than plates. A plain white table, bowls of dough and sprinkles, a board for each child and a grandparent in charge is its own kind of tablescape, and possibly the best one.
Lay it like any other table: a cloth that can be washed, candles safely out of reach, something to drink for the adults. There are ideas for what to make in our piece on Christmas baking with kids.
Table 10
Candlelight, and very little else
Our last table is barely a table at all. Turn the overhead lights off. Put a cluster of white pillar candles in the middle, some pine and berries around them, and let the candlelight do the rest. It is the table for late on Christmas night, when the children are asleep and the adults have finally sat down.
It is also the most flattering light there is. Everyone looks better by candlelight, which is more or less why we build a whole room around it.
Laying the children’s end of the table
Most Christmas tables have a children’s end, whether anyone planned one or not. Plan it. Put the candles and the glassware at the grown-up end and give the children something of their own: a paper runner they are allowed to draw on, a small bowl of clementines each, a cracker, a name card they can colour in before lunch.
Use plates and cups that won’t break, and keep the ribbon and the greenery, because children notice when their end is as pretty as everyone else’s. A child who feels the table was laid for them will sit at it for noticeably longer, which on Christmas Day is worth more than any centrepiece.
And if the children are small, lay their end last. Nothing survives a toddler for long, but a table that is still intact when everyone sits down makes for a much better first photograph.
What we’d leave off the table
Anything tall in the middle that stops people seeing each other: centrepieces should sit below eye level, or be tall and thin like a taper. Scented candles near food, which fight the lunch. Novelty everything, all at once. Glitter, which you will still be finding in March. And plastic greenery that looks plastic; a few real branches beat a metre of fake garland every time.
Let’s sum up
A good Christmas table comes down to a few decisions made early: a feeling, a colour used three times, greenery down the middle, more candles than you think, and napkins tied with something. From the full red-and-tartan table to linen, clementines and candlelight on a Dubai terrace, hopefully one of these festive tablescapes has given you an idea for your own. Then sit down at it, because that is the point.
Questions about Christmas tables
The night before, if you can. Cloth, plates, glasses, napkins and greenery can all go down on Christmas Eve; candles and fresh fruit on the morning. It turns the busiest morning of the year into one less job.
Flower markets, garden centres and many supermarkets sell cut greenery and poinsettias through December. Cedar and eucalyptus last longest indoors; mist them in the morning and keep them away from air conditioning vents.
Warm, low light, with the overhead lights off and candles lit. One colour repeated, rather than many. And a clear space in the middle of the table where something happens: a cake, a present, a child reaching across.
Dressing the family to match the table? Our guide to what to wear for Christmas family photos has twelve looks.
The Setup Collective builds three Christmas rooms in Dubai each season, The Forest, The Tree and The Kitchen, then photographs families in them. Candidly: nobody gets told to tuck their chin in. Who we are
