Christmas in Australia doesn’t work like it does in most other places The Xmas Designers operates. While teams in New York and Chicago are wrapping up for a white Christmas, Australian property managers are planning around 35 degree heat, long daylight hours, and a retail calendar that peaks the same week as Boxing Day sales. It’s a different job, and it goes better when the decorator has actually planned for our weather instead of just shipping a Northern Hemisphere idea south and hoping it works.

This guide is for anyone managing a shopping centre, hotel, or office in Australia who is starting to think about Christmas decorations, and when they need to book someone. The Xmas Designers put this together based on what we’re seeing across our Australian projects this year.

Why Christmas Decorating in Australia Is Different

A few things set Australia apart from a typical Northern Hemisphere job:

• Heat and sun: outdoor garlands, wreaths and lights need to be made from materials that can handle strong sun, or they fade and crack within one season.
• Long daylight hours: because it doesn’t get dark until late, a display has to look good in daylight too, not just when it’s lit up at night.
• Storm season: summer storms often hit the same weeks that trees and displays are going up, so everything needs to be rigged and anchored properly.
• A short booking window: the season is short and lands right in the busiest retail weeks of the year, so early bookings get the best pick of dates and crews.

These aren’t small details. A display built for a European winter, with paper based trims or lights rated for cold, dry air, can start falling apart within weeks of being installed in an Australian summer. It’s one of the reasons The Xmas Designers builds and sources materials specifically for the climate a job is going into, rather than using the same stock everywhere.

What Shopping Centres Are Booking for 2026

Retail is usually the first and biggest group to book each year, since centre management wants displays up before the Christmas trading rush begins. Here’s what we’re seeing for 2026:

• Big trees near the main entrance or centre court that look good both in daylight and once the lights come on at night.
• A move away from traditional red and gold toward softer, sun friendly colours like champagne, blush and soft green.
• Displays built to be reused across several centres in the same group, which brings the cost down per site.
• Interactive photo spots near the display, since centre managers are finding these get shared on social media and bring extra foot traffic during the trading period.

If you manage more than one site, it’s worth asking your decorator whether a display can be designed to travel between centres. The Xmas Designers builds a lot of our shopping centre work this way, since it spreads the cost of a bigger, more impressive piece across a whole portfolio instead of one site absorbing it alone.

Hotels: Decor That Works Day and Night

For hotels, a Christmas display has to do two jobs at once: look great for guest photos during the day, and set the mood for dinners and events at night. Lobby trees, backdrops for function rooms, and outdoor terrace styling are usually where hotel clients want to spend their budget first. Hotel groups also tend to think about decor as part of their guest experience for the whole season, not just a one off installation, which is why maintenance and small refreshes through December matter as much as the initial install.

Offices: Small Jobs, Fast Turnaround

Office Christmas jobs are usually smaller but tighter on time, since many companies don’t sign off on a budget until late in the year. That means the company you hire needs to be able to decorate a reception area or foyer in days, not weeks. If that’s your situation, ask any supplier upfront how fast they can actually turn a job around. The Xmas Designers keeps a smaller, standalone process for office jobs specifically because the timeline is so different from a shopping centre install, and clients shouldn’t have to wait behind a bigger project to get an answer.

When to Book

Because Australian summer lands right in the busiest retail weeks of the year, installers get booked out fast, especially for bigger jobs like shopping centres and hotels. As a rough guide:

• Shopping centres and large hotel groups: book by September.
• Offices and smaller retail spaces: October usually still works, but your options shrink fast after that.
• Anything booked in the final two weeks before December will likely be limited to what’s already available, not a full custom design.

This is true for almost every commercial decorator working in Australia over summer, not just The Xmas Designers, so it’s worth starting the conversation with whoever you choose well before you actually need a display on site.

Built to Last Beyond One Season

A lot of clients ask us whether custom pieces are worth it if they’re only going up for a few weeks. In our experience, the answer usually comes down to reuse. Because The Xmas Designers builds most large pieces from durable, weather appropriate materials, a well made tree or arch can go back into storage in January and come out again the following November still looking sharp, rather than needing to be replaced every year. For multi site retail groups in particular, that reuse is often what makes a bigger upfront design worth it.

What The Xmas Designers Does

The Xmas Designers is a commercial Christmas decoration company, and Australia is one of the countries we work in every year alongside the UAE, US and Europe. We don’t sell off the shelf trees and garlands. Every job is designed from scratch, from the first concept through to taking it all down, so a shopping centre out west and a hotel lobby on Collins Street end up looking nothing alike.

For clients in Australia, The Xmas Designers handles:

• Design: mood boards, colours and a plan built around your space and budget, not a template.
• Custom builds: trees, arches, wreaths and photo displays made from materials that hold up in Australian sun and weather.
• Installation: crews who know how to work around centre courts, laneways and high rise lobbies without disrupting your day.
• Maintenance: check ins and repairs through December so everything still looks good after a storm.
• Takedown and storage: we remove everything after the season and store it for reuse next year if you want.

Where The Xmas Designers Works in Australia

Right now our Australian team is based in Melbourne, where The Xmas Designers handles shopping centres, hotels and offices across the city. If you’re in Melbourne, our Melbourne Christmas decorations page has local examples and timelines. If you’re elsewhere in Australia, get in touch and we can talk about what’s possible for your area.

A Few Common Questions

How far ahead should we get a quote? A rough scope and a site walk through, even in winter, is enough for The Xmas Designers to put together a proposal. You don’t need a final budget locked in to start the conversation.

Can you match our brand colours? Yes. Most commercial clients want their Christmas display to sit alongside their existing branding rather than clash with it, and that’s built into the design stage.

Do you work with our existing decorations? Sometimes. If you already own pieces worth keeping, The Xmas Designers can build a new display around them rather than starting from zero.

Getting Started

The properties that end up with the display they actually wanted are the ones that start early. Even a rough idea and a walk through in winter gives our team time to plan around the weather and access needs, instead of rushing everything at the last minute. The Xmas Designers would rather have that conversation in July than in the last week of November.

Ready to plan your 2026 Christmas display? Contact The Xmas Designers and let’s talk.