Newport Mansions’ Christmas decorator shares tips for stunning holiday decor

Visiting Rhode Island’s Newport Mansions around Christmas is a yearly tradition for many New Englanders, but few people probably know who the man behind the splendorous decoration design is.

Jim Donahue — the Preservation Society of Newport County’s curator of historic landscapes — has been in charge of designing the holiday decorations at three of the society’s Gilded Age mansions for 18 years.

Donahue is a Massachusetts native who grew up in Framingham. He came to work for the preservation society about 20 years ago as the chief horticulturalist at the Green Animals Topiary Garden and was soon asked to take charge of decorating the mansions for Christmas.

But even as Donahue has moved jobs over the years, he’s kept spearheading the effort to deck the halls of the historic homes for the holidays.

“I just can’t seem to ditch it,” he said jokingly.

How Donahue designs the rooms

Decorating the mansions is no simple task, but Donahue said he does enjoy the design aspect. Each room of each historic home has a decoration theme that’s based on some aspect of the room, he said. All the decorations are carefully selected and arranged based on that theme.

“We try to match something in each room of each house to the decorations that are going there,” he said. “Usually it’s color, but sometimes it can be something unique. Like in the music room at The Breakers, the walls have platinum leaf, and so we looked for ornaments for the tree that have platinum metal.”

Each mansion also has at least one room whose theme is based on its former owner’s life. For instance, The Breakers belonged to the famously-rich Vanderbilts, whose coat-of-arms contains acorns and oak leaves. So in the library — which Donahue said would’ve served as the family space — the Christmas tree is adorned with oak leaves and acorns.

Similarly, the family became rich due to Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt I’s success as a railroad magnate, so the theme of his grandson Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s bedroom at The Breakers is trains, Donahue said.

This type of theming also helps Donahue achieve one of his main goals in decorating the mansions — having them enhance the experience of learning about a historic home and family. Visitors should still be able to see the architecture of the house and be taking the museum tour while viewing the decorations, he said. This is one reason he recommends visiting on a Thursday or Sunday when there are fewer visitors.

“They should still be learning about the building and the family and the site story. The holiday decorations really are just extra and make it extra special. I don’t really want to obliterate the museum experience,” he said.

As for Donahue’s favorite room, that would be the “gothic room” at Marble House — a particularly “opulent” mansion built for Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s younger brother, William K. Vanderbilt.

How the rooms come together

Donahue’s work doesn’t stop at designing each room. It takes about 50 people to put the decorations up over the course of about six weeks beginning in October each year, he said.

While most of the rooms keep the same theme year-to-year due to logistical and budgetary constraints, Donahue has changed the theme of every room in every mansion at least once over the years to keep things fresh and ensure that each mansion displays a range of aesthetics, he said.

“You want there to be, from room to room, a different color scheme, a different style. Some might be more traditional, some might be more over the top or contemporary. And so if I think the mix isn’t right, I will switch things up to have more variety,” he said.

New this year is a peacock theme in Julia Berland’s bedroom at The Elms, Donahue said.

But even though Donahue doesn’t redesign each room in each mansion every year, he’s always looking for ways to improve the decorations. By the time they take the decorations down in January, he has a list of changes he wants to make in each room, and he makes sure to order the new decorations by April 1, he said.

If you were hoping to find out where Donahue gets his lovely pieces so that you can buy your own, unfortunately most of these vendors don’t sell to the public.

“There are many, many, many wholesalers of holiday decor that are to the trade only. I use a lot of them. But I also am not above buying things at Bed Bath Beyond if it’s the right thing — but it can’t be cheap,” he said.

Donahue’s holiday decorating tips

Still, Donahue has some tips for taking your holiday decor to the next level.

“Start with a martini,” he said jokingly.

Firstly, Donahue said, make sure you stick to either warm colors — such as red, gold and orange — or cool colors — such as silver, blue and purple — within each room. Don’t mix them.

Secondly, make sure to buy several of the same ornament for each tree, and try to avoid having a hodge-podge of random ornaments, Donahue said.

“This is what allows you to have a theme and what makes a designer tree look designer-y,” he said.

Lastly, decorate the tree from the inside out, using the full length of the branch. Each tree in the Newport Mansions has three levels: an innermost layer, a middle layer and an outer layer, Donahue said.

The innermost layer has the largest, cheapest and simplest ornaments. The goal with this layer is to cover up the trunk of the tree, so Donahue selects ornaments that match the walls of the room in some way, he said.

The middle layer has more interesting and complex ornaments to contrast the first layer, Donahue said.

Finally, the outermost layer has the most intricate and fancy ornaments, he said. These are the ornaments that create the room’s theme, and in a home, they should be the ornaments with the most sentimental value, Donahue said.

You can visit the Newport Mansions to see the decorations at The Breakers, The Elms and Marble House through Jan. 1. Tickets can be purchased online for one, two or three of the houses and used on any day and time they are open. You can also buy tickets to see just the outdoor lights at The Breakers at nightfall and stroll through a half-mile of holiday lights as Christmas music plays. Ticket prices range from $10 to $16 for children ages six to 12 and $25 to $46 dollars for people 13 years and up.