A Front Porch That Looks Done in One Afternoon

Our first December in Florida I stood on the front porch with a cup of coffee and realized the inside of the house was completely done and the outside looked like nobody lived there. Wreath on the door, and that was it! Just a wreath, floating on a big blank porch.

So I did what I think most people do, which is go looking for one of those big pre-made outdoor arrangements. And y’all. They were $59 each. Each! I needed two, because one of anything on a porch looks like a mistake. I stood there in the aisle doing math on a $120 pair of pots and put them right back down!

That was the year I figured out the formula, and I have used the exact same one every year since, in a rental and in a house we own. It’s two lanterns, two pots, and a doormat. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It takes an afternoon, most of the pieces come back out of the bin every year, and I build the pots myself for less than the cost of one store-bought arrangement.

Here’s exactly how I do it.

1. Two lanterns, one tall and one short

This is the piece that does the most work, and it took me two seasons to land on the right ones. (I moved a lot of metal around that porch.) I bought a single medium lantern first and it looked so lonely I moved it three times and then took it inside!

What actually works is two lanterns in different heights, sitting right next to each other on one side of the door. The set I use is 24 inches and 17 inches, black metal, and that seven-inch difference is the entire trick — your eye reads it as an arrangement instead of two objects. Same finish, different height. (If they’re the same height it just looks like you were trying to be symmetrical and missed.)

Put both of them on the same side. I know that feels wrong! Try it anyway. Lanterns on the left, pots on the right, door in the middle — that little bit of asymmetry is what makes a porch look decorated by a person rather than by a floor plan.

(One more thing: black. I have tried galvanized, I have tried the warm bronze-y ones, and black is the one that looks intentional against every single house color I’ve lived with.)

2. Waterproof LED pillar candles with a built-in timer

This is my favorite part of the whole porch, and it’s the part nobody thinks about until they’ve already bought the lanterns!

Real candles outside are a non-starter. Wind, rain, a kid, and something actually on fire fifteen feet from where we sleep — no! So it’s battery pillars, and the two things that matter are waterproof and timer.

The ones I use are 8 inches by 4 inches, set of two, waterproof, with a remote and a timer built in. The size is the part I got wrong twice — a skinny little 3-inch candle inside a 24-inch lantern looks like a mistake. Go bigger than feels right! Inside a tall lantern, an 8-inch pillar finally reads as a candle instead of a tea light that got lost.

But the timer is the real reason I’m writing this section. You set it once, and every evening after that they come on at the same time and shut themselves off six hours later. Which means when we pull into the driveway after dinner, or after church, or after the world’s longest Target run, the porch is already glowing and I did nothing. I didn’t remember. I didn’t go out in the cold with a remote. It was just on!

That’s the whole feeling I’m chasing with outdoor decor, honestly. Coming home to a house that looks happy to see you.

3. Two matching pots, on the other side of the door

Get plain black resin pots. Not the ones with the scrolly detail, not terra cotta, not anything with a pattern — the greenery is the decoration and the pot’s whole job is to disappear underneath it.

The pair I use is 12 inches across and 18 inches tall, which is the size that finally looked right to me. Anything shorter than about 16 inches gets swallowed by the porch and reads as a plant that needs watering.

Two more things the wind taught me. First, weight them! Put a couple of bricks or half a bag of play sand in the bottom before anything else goes in, because a tall pot filled with foam is a sail, and I have chased one down a driveway in my slippers! Second, resin over ceramic, always. Ceramic is heavier, more expensive, and I cracked one bringing it in. (In February. On the step.)

4. Cheap faux cedar, and a lot of it

Here’s the part that saves you the $120!

You do not buy an arrangement. You buy a big bag of the cheapest faux cedar and mixed pine picks you can find — the 30 and 40-piece craft bundles, the ones sold for wreath-making, usually with a few red berry stems mixed in. They’re a few dollars a bundle, they’re not remotely convincing up close, and it does not matter even slightly, because nobody is inspecting your porch pot from eight inches away. From the driveway it’s just green!

Cut a block of dry floral foam to sit down in the pot (on top of your bricks), then start sticking picks in around the outside edge, angled down and outward so they drape over the rim of the pot. Work in a circle, then fill toward the middle. Keep going after you think you’re done — the number one thing that makes a homemade porch pot look homemade is not using enough greenery. It should look overstuffed. Mine take way more picks than I ever expect, every single year!

This is the messy part, and there is no getting around it. Do it on a driveway or a garage floor, not on your porch, unless you love sweeping little plastic needles!

5. Three tall stems out of the top of each pot

This is the trick that makes a homemade pot stop looking homemade, and it costs almost nothing!

After the cedar is in and the pot looks full, take three tall stems — faux Norfolk pine branches are what I use, the long 30-inch craft ones — and push them straight down into the middle of the foam so they stand up above everything else. Three, not two, and not five! Stagger the heights slightly.

That vertical is the difference between “a pot with greenery in it” and “an arrangement.” It’s the exact thing the $59 version has that your first attempt doesn’t. It took me two full seasons of looking at store-bought pots and going what is it, what is the thing before I noticed it was just height in the middle!

Skip the ribbon! I’ve tried it outside and it’s soaked and sad by the second week.

6. A doormat, which is genuinely the last 10%

A coir Christmas doormat is the cheapest thing on this list and it does an unreasonable amount of work! Look for natural coco coir with a non-slip PVC backing, in the 30 x 17 or 30 x 18 range, which is the size that fits a standard front door without looking like a bath mat.

I go with something simple and mostly text — script “Merry Christmas,” or “Be Merry.” Anything with a big printed scene on it fights with the greenery, and now you’ve got two things yelling at each other on a porch that’s about six feet wide.

Buy it in October. Every year I decide in early December that this is the year I finally get the doormat, and every year the good ones are gone and I’m standing there looking at one with a cartoon reindeer on it!

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The actual afternoon

Order matters, and it’s shorter than you think:

Sweep the porch first (five minutes, and it changes everything). Doormat down. Lanterns on the left, candles in, timer set right then while you’re standing there — don’t tell yourself you’ll do it later. Then bricks, foam, cedar, tall stems, both pots, on the right. Stand at the end of the driveway and look at it, because that’s the only angle that actually matters and it’s the one nobody checks.

Two hours. Maybe three if your daughter is helping, which mine always is, and which always doubles everything and is always worth it.

And then next November you pull the same bin out, stick the same picks back in the same foam, and you’re done in forty-five minutes!

If you put a porch together with this formula, please post a picture and tag me @sugardesignco on instagram — I especially want to see the pots, because I want to know if the three-tall-stems thing works as well on your porch as it does on mine!

-Ciera

Made something with this? Tag me @sugardesignco — I love seeing them.