Decorating your home is all about creating a specific feeling, an atmosphere that affects the people who enter a room.
When engaging in seasonal decorating, the goal is to evoke the natural world, in one of its elementary states; winter, spring, summer, or fall.
This is done using a variety of design elements which are pretty much inherent to any indoor space.
Of these elements, none are more important than color and pattern.
The use of various colors and patterns can have a dramatic effect on an environment.
Dark colors make things seem slower, gloomier, and more peaceful, while lighter colors will cause things to be more lively, sometimes irritatingly so.
Using color to evoke a seasonal style will depend entirely on which time of the year you are trying to simulate.
Most often, you will simply be trying to align your home with the actual environmental conditions outside.
That is why so many people redecorate in the spring, they want to cast off winter cold and replace it with a décor which is more appropriate to the weather.
For a spring atmosphere, you should take your cues from Easter colors.
These are pastels, light, airy hues, including greens, yellows, and pink tones.
Generally holidays such as Easter are associated with certain colors, not for religious or historical reasons, but because of the season they represent.
That is why you can often use holiday patterns as a crutch, when you are having trouble determining the best way to evoke the season.
Summer seasonal décor is a bit trickier, as there aren't very many major holidays over the course of the warmest months.
You have things like the Fourth of July, but those colors are patriotic, and don't necessarily have anything to do with the environment.
For summer, use earth tones, and soft adobe colors.
Hues which evoke a sense of warmth, and sun baked comfort are especially popular at this time of the year.
Red, yellow, and orange tones are also popular.
However you should be careful with more extreme colors, as you can end up making a space feel warmer than it needs to, in an already hot time of the year.
If however you are beating back winter with a summer seasonal style, then you can pretty much go as hot as you want.
Winter decorating is all about the holidays.
Red, greens, and blues, even though they have little to do with the frozen tundra outside, are all important colors for this style.
You can use a white, blue back drop, although you don't want to create a space which is too washed out.
One way to do a true winter themed décor is to use glass, crystal, and other translucent pieces.
Translucency gives the boring plain white and blue colors, an added dimension, adding light and its spectrum to the beauty of the space.
The fall is by far the most colorful season of the year.
Red, oranges, browns, greens, and burgundy colors all mingle together to create a cacophony of hues.
While a relaxed, earth tone setting will be the predominant choice for fall festivities, you can also choose to go bright and wild, with deep reds, contrasting yellows, and other extreme colors.
Thanksgiving is the major fall holiday, and you can of course take decorative cues from that.
Seasonal decorating is all about color and pattern.
Using just these two elements it is possible to evoke just about any outside environment right in your home.
One short cut is to use the major holiday of the season as a guide for hue and tone, although all you really have to do is walk outside and get inspired by the naturally beauty of the world around you.