The best holiday decorating ideas start with how you’ll actually use each room, not with the ornaments. Think about the moments that fill your season, like Christmas morning, movie night, a big dinner and houseguests. Then arrange furniture, color and comfort around those moments, and the decorations simply finish the look.

To show what that looks like, our designers styled seven real holiday rooms. Each one comes with a practical tip you can borrow, whether you’re refreshing one corner or hosting the whole family.

Corduroy upholstery is a soft, cut-pile fabric woven with raised, parallel ribs called wales. The number of wales per inch sets its personality, from relaxed and vintage to crisp and polished. Its pile also leans in one direction, called the nap, so the color shifts as light moves across it. Meanwhile, welting along the seams gives corduroy furniture its tailored edge.

Those three ideas (wales, nap, and welting) explain almost everything you notice when you look at a corduroy chair. In fact, once you know them, you can read a corduroy sofa the way an upholsterer does. If you are still weighing fabric against other covers, our guide to fabric vs. leather furniture is a good place to start.