Old Houses Wear the Season Best, and This Year the Decorating Agrees

Designers say the holiday look this year is turning backward, toward the kind of Christmas décor a previous generation would recognize. For the owners of the Mediterranean Revivals and Georgian Colonials that fill the listings we follow, that is welcome news, since those rooms were drawn for exactly this sort of dressing. A nostalgic scheme asks nothing of a well-built house except that it be itself.

With reporting from Veranda.