How to Make a Christmas Window Display

Creating a window display for your small business is a great way to bring in new traffic and increase visibility to your storefront location. Learning how to make a Christmas window display during the holiday season can be a fun thing to do that can showcase new products your store carries - or to be the most beautiful attraction on your street! As a former small business owner, decorating our store windows every year was something we not only enjoyed - but that our friends, family and customers looked forward to seeing every year.

Creating a beautiful Christmas display in your storefront business window can be done in several ways.

We've all seen those beautiful Christmas window displays in the big stores like Macy's and other high end stores that take full advantage of the holiday season. To create something similar in your own business window, take a look at some of the displays to get ideas from them. In most of the displays you will see that the display is NOT busy. It is not necessary to fill your window with stuff to make it an eye-catcher. Think about what your customers would like to see - and customize it around your own business.

Let's say you are an auto parts dealer - maybe a Santa in the window holding auto tools would be appropriate. Or if you are a flower shop - maybe a snowman holding a bouquet of flowers? The possibilities are endless, and for those of you that want to be "politically correct" by not having a Santa in your window, maybe a snow scene painted on your windows with some of your store products might be just the ticket? Other ideas for making a Christmas window display for your small business:

• Have an artist come in and paint on your windows. As an artist, I have painted hundreds of display windows throughout the years, many of them at Christmas time. I worked with the business to come up with a good solid promotion mixed in with happy decorative art like holly leaves and berries, snowmen, and winter scenes. To read more about my adventures as a Christmas window painter and see more of my work you can read my hub here: The Lost Art of Painting Christmas Windows.
• If doing the display yourself, clear out one main window to do your display and come up with a theme. You may even have some Christmas items from past holidays to put in your window. A beautiful Christmas tree with ornaments hanging can be a wonderful way to celebrate the holidays. Think about hanging some of your products from the Christmas tree as ornaments. If you are a 7-11 store for example, hang some candy bars, household items and food items like bananas in the tree (you will need to periodically replace the fruit though if you use fresh produce) Get creative!
• Go the dollar store and pick up decorations to add to your window display. The dollar store is an incredible place to get a plethora of holiday decorations. Maybe you want to do your display with different shades of white with just hints of reds and greens. You can find almost everything you need at your local dollar or 99 cent store!
• Think out of the box. One of the most memorable Christmas displays I saw was of an upside down Christmas tree hanging in an antique store window. Getting creative like this can really add the wow factor and get passer-bys to stop and actually look and stare at your window. Great marketing and oh so much fun!
• Wrap your window like a Christmas package. Use beautiful wrapping paper and make one gigantic present out of your window. Get a huge bow, thick ribbon and add the final touches. A giant present will attract a lot of attention and be a real treat for kids passing by and people coming into your store (If you are doing this from the inside of your window, remember you have to do everything in reverse, like the ribbon first then the paper) Add the bow outside the window to give it that 3-D effect.
• Put up a miniature town scene in your window with houses that light up and then lights all around the window. These town scenes are absolutely charming, with little roads, trees and people. Add cotton balls for the snow. No one can resist stopping to look at a small town theme with lots of things to look at (Just remember to make sure you have your lights hooked up right, and if you leave them on all night, make sure you have everything safely hooked up so you don't have a fire!)

Even of you are not very creative, making a Christmas display for your store window is not hard to do. I mean think about it, you decorate at home, right? Just use some of those same ideas to decorating your store-front. It does not have to be perfect, it just needs to be fun and colorful. You will find that once you start decorating and make a Christmas window display, it will most likely be something you end up doing every year just for the shear fun of it. And the other bonus is that you will attract new customers and give your business something that makes it stand out from the rest. Great for the spirits and great for your business too!