The Beautiful Christmas Decor Trend That Shea McGee Can't Get Enough Of

As a Netflix star and home interior designer, Shea McGee usually chooses at least one vintage piece for a room to give it an air of mystery. For Christmas 2025, her choice of old-fashioned bows as decor can be seen on her tree, on the fireplace mantel, and more. McGee spoke about her love of bows on a recent Instagram post, and while she admits she's always loved bows – "I have them in my girls' hair from Day One" – they really start to crowd into her decorator's brain come Christmastime. For McGee and for her fans who love her and all things bows, this is a good thing. It seems that the home decor bow trend is again the must-have Christmas decor item in 2025.

This year, designers and decorating fans alike have appeared on social media outlets like YouTube and TikTok, showing off their bow designs. And there have even been some big names (aside from McGee) who've added Christmas bows to their holiday decor, like clothing designer Victoria Beckham, per House Beautiful.  For McGee, adding bows offers her a way to bring pops of color to the neutral color palettes she prefers to decorate with. Case in point? Shea McGee tied some deep-red 1.5-inch silk bows with extra-long tails to her Christmas tree. The length of the tails, coupled with the number of bows on the tree, fools the eye into thinking there's more color on the tree than there actually is. That's why McGee leaves such long tails on her bows.

Shea McGee uses bows in a number of different places in her Christmas decor scheme. Aside from the assorted bows she placed on her tree, the designer also tapped a 4-inch-wide cream-colored bow for her fireplace mantel. The bow sat on top of a length of garland in an asymmetrical design, with the bow on one side of the fireplace and the McGee-House Christmas stockings on the other. Because many things in nature are symmetrical – humans, for example – the human brain responds well to symmetry. Adding something asymmetrical to the design mix, like the off-to-the-side bow, draws the eye. The asymmetrical display forces the eye to notice an element in the decor that it might not linger on otherwise. 

Additionally, bows upgrade a holiday tablescape when they're tied around the handles of silverware or are featured heavily in the holiday centerpiece. They also look sweet around the base of a wall sconce or on the cupboards in the kitchen. Another way bows are getting noticed is in the gift-wrapping realm. This year, some people are wrapping their gifts with paper and ribbons that are an exact color match. Incidentally, this use of bows is taking its cue from another trend this year, the return of the Ralph Lauren Christmas trend aesthetic. In many of these cases, the addition of a bow, mixed in with a retro color palette filled with deep greens and browns, creates the perfect vintage Christmas look. And vintage anything is a look that seems to be dominating not only the holiday season, but the year 2025 in general. 

While many of the bows that designer Shea McGee uses in her holiday decorating schemes are of the soft, ribbon-y kind, there are some other iterations of bows that are worth mentioning. McGee herself has been known to top her Christmas tree with a metal bow made by her company, McGee & Co. This look has become popular with many of her fans, some of whom have made dupes of the metal McGee bow for their own trees. 

It's also possible to find ornaments shaped like bows for the boughs of your tree. Metal ornaments on the tree count among the more popular items for those who've decorated in the industrial decor style. On a related note, steampunk styles, which rely heavily on metal objects in their decorating displays, would be a match for a decorative piece like this. McGee's isn't the only place where bow fans will find ornamental metal bows, though. Tondiamo gold Christmas metal bow ornaments, or others like them, also fit these less-than-frilly decor styles, opening up more decorating possibilities for people who lean toward styles like industrial or steampunk. These metal pieces are either bent into bow shapes or made from a cast molding to create all-in-one pieces that are meant to last well beyond Christmas 2025.