12 Best Chinese New Year Decorations to Spruce Up Your Workspace

Want to bring some Lunar New Year cheer into the office? Get your team together to craft bold red-and-gold décor that adds warmth, energy, and a fresh start to your workspace.

If you’re looking for simple, meaningful ideas to make and display, here are 12 creative Chinese New Year decorations your team can craft together.

In this blog, we’ll explore: 

• Why craft Chinese New Year decorations with your team?
• 12 best Chinese New Year decoration ideas.
• How to host a Chinese New Year craft event for remote teams?

Table of contents

Can Chinese New Year Decorations Make Celebrations More Inclusive at Work?

Yes! 87% of employees believe holiday decor can greatly influence employee morale, so starting the year with a cultural celebration and encouraging team participation helps build an inclusive work culture. Crafting Chinese New Year decorations allows team members to explore Chinese culture creatively and understand the significance of color combinations, festive messaging, and symbolic meanings. 

Whether it’s the legend of the Nian monster, the significance of red lanterns, or other cultural stories, everyone gets to learn something new while enjoying hands-on activities, making the learning experience more rich and interesting. As a bonus, participants create meaningful keepsakes they can display as meaningful reminders of the experience or gift to loved ones. 

12 Best Chinese New Year Decorations for Teams

Ideas for crafting Chinese New Year decorations should be creative and inclusive for both beginners and craft enthusiasts. Here are 12 amazing Lunar New Year craft ideas for teams to explore.

1. Red Paper Lanterns🏮

Red paper lanterns are believed to bring happiness and good fortune, making them one of the most meaningful Chinese New Year decorations teams can craft. Participants can fold a red paper in half, cut evenly spaced strips from the fold to the edge, unfold to form a tube, glue the edges, and attach the handle to complete the lanterns. They can even personalize each piece with ribbons, beads, sequins, or calligraphy tags to make their crafts stand out. Once finished, these lanterns can be hung around the home or workspace or even shared as thoughtful festive gifts. 

Materials Required: Red paper, decorative materials like ribbons, sequins, and beads, string, scissors, and glue. 

2. Festive Door Couplets🧧

Festive door couplets (Chunlian) are pasted on both sides of the doorway to ward off bad luck and invite positive energy into the home. Teams can craft these banners by choosing a traditional Chinese couplet with good wishes or auspicious sayings and writing it vertically in black ink on red paper. If you want to learn how to write the characters from an expert, join a Chinese Calligraphy Class to master the use of brushes and ink to create the decoration from scratch. 

Materials Required: Red paper, ink and brushes (or paint pens), ruler, pencil, scissors, glue, and embellishments of choice. 

3. Paper Patterns📙

Jianzhi, or traditional paper cuttings featuring various cultural symbols, are used to decorate windows, doors, and walls to bring good luck. Team members can create this UNESCO-recognized craft by cutting out designs from red paper, such as dragons, peonies, magpies, or other patterns of their choice. They can also use printed templates or stencils to craft the decor without worrying about drawing skills or complex designs. 

Materials Required: Red paper, scissors, pencils, and erasers. 

4. Lucky Fu Character✨

The character 福 (Fú) carries the spirit of good fortune, making it a beautiful and meaningful highlight in Chinese New Year decorations. Team members can follow online tutorials to learn how to write the character correctly and recreate it on red paper to decorate their spaces. To give your craft a more traditional look, tilt the square base at 45 degrees to create a ‘diamond’ shape before working on the project. 

Materials Required: Red paper, brush, and ink. 

5. Red Envelope Garlands🎋

Red symbolizes good fortune in Chinese culture, which is why people use red envelopes to give monetary gifts to loved ones and convey good wishes for the upcoming year. Participants can take red paper, fold it into a desired shape, and glue it together to create the envelope. Encourage everyone to use stencils or hand-draw festive designs like dragons, flowers, or coins using golden color to add a festive touch. To use it as Chinese New Year decorations, create a few envelopes and string them together to form a garland for the doorway. 

Materials Required: Red paper, golden marker or paint, scissors, glue, decorative materials, stencils (optional). 

6. Origami Gold Ingots🪙

Gold ingots are traditionally placed near the entrance or in other common areas to attract good fortune and prosperity. You can easily make a few by folding gold or yellow paper into a boat-like shape. To give them a three-dimensional effect that resembles the Chinese sycee ingot, you just need to carefully puff out the center of the origami ingots. 

Materials Required: Gold or yellow origami sheets. 

7. Good Luck Knot Charms🔴

Chinese New Year decorations, like good-luck knot charms, are perfect for teams looking to craft something that attracts positive energy. Since this knot can be a little tricky to master, we recommend following step-by-step tutorials to get the base right. Once done, you can decorate it with tassels, beads, and charms, then hang them on door handles for display. 

Materials Required: Satin or nylon cord, scissors, glue, beads, tassels, and keyring loops (optional).

8. Paper Fans🪭

The round shape of Chinese paper fan decorations resembles a full moon and stands for unity and harmony. Participants can use printed papers with traditional patterns or draw their own designs on blank sheets to create the base of the fan. They can then fold the paper back and forth in an accordion style, gather it into a circular shape, and attach it to a wooden stick or straw to complete the decoration.

Materials Required: Printed or blank sheets, a wooden stick or straw for the handle, decoration supplies, and glue. 

9. Faux Firecracker Decor🎆

Firecrackers add to the celebratory vibe and are believed to scare off evil spirits, welcoming good luck. For this idea, team members can create similar-looking Chinese New Year decorations by rolling red paper into cylindrical shapes and decorating them with golden ribbons. They can then attach the cylinders together using strings in a cascading line or a circular cluster and hang them on doorknobs to mimic the look of real firecrackers. 

Materials Required: Red paper (or cardboard), golden ribbons, strings, stencils to draw designs (optional), scissors, and glue. 

10. Plum Blossoms🌸

Plum blossoms bloom during winter and are a symbol of endurance and hope in Chinese culture. You can make origami flowers or fold a sheet multiple times and cut it at an angle to form symmetrical blooms when unfolded. After completing, you can attach them to a brown paper branch or a real dried twig and arrange them in a vase to use as Chinese New Year decorations.

Materials Required: Pink, red, or white papers, brown paper, or dried twigs for the stem, scissors, glue, and a vase. 

11. New Year Paintings🖼️

New Year paintings (nianhua) are traditional artworks used to decorate homes and welcome good fortune while warding off evil spirits. These paintings feature deities, animals, cultural symbols, and other prosperous scenes that convey blessings and protection. Team members can join a guided painting session to learn from an expert how to create these themed artworks and explore their meanings and significance in detail. 

Materials Required: Canvas, pencil, erasers, colors, brushes, a palette, and a bowl of water. 

12. Money Tree💰

Money trees are auspicious Chinese New Year decorations believed to attract wealth and prosperity in the coming year. Teams can arrange dried branches in a vase and decorate them with origami ingots, red envelopes, and other lucky charms that symbolize abundance to craft the tree. To take the creativity up a notch, add fairy lights or custom New Year messages to share with loved ones. 

Materials Required: Dried twig, vase, decorations like red envelopes, ingots, and lucky charms, thread, glue, and scissors. 

How Can Remote Teams Host a Chinese New Year Craft Event?

To host a Chinese New Year Craft event virtually, select an online video conferencing platform like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Create a list of cultural crafts based on your team’s interests and skill levels. Make sure to share a list of required supplies in advance so participants can source them locally. Send out meeting invites with all the necessary details so team members can join the event on the scheduled date. 

If you want to skip the hassle, opt for a remote team building company like Hooray Teams. They offer activities like Hongbao lantern making, painting sessions, and couplet classes (with customization options and event kits for kitted experiences) that are perfect to embrace the festive vibe from afar. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How to decorate for Chinese New Year?

You can use plum blossoms, new year paintings, gold ingots, red envelope garlands, and other cultural decorations to decorate your house for the Lunar New Year. 

What color materials should we use to craft the Lunar New Year decorations?

You can use red and gold to craft your Chinese New Year decoration, as these symbolize good luck, wealth, and prosperity in Chinese culture. 

What are some good Chinese New Year party decorations? 

Faux firecrackers, money trees, gold coins, hand-lettered banners, and paper fans are some good party decorations for the  Chinese New Year. 

What are a few types of Chinese New Year door decorations? 

A few popular types of Chinese New Year door decorations include red tassels, good luck knot charms, and festive banners.

How can we ensure that Chinese New Year crafts are easy to make and inclusive for all? 

Select craft ideas that involve simple steps and require easy-to-find supplies to make the session inclusive for all. You can also run an online poll with a list of craft options and select the one with the most votes to choose something your team will actually enjoy.

Refer to online tutorials or consider joining hosted classes or workshops to enjoy hassle-free projects where experts teach you calligraphy for couplets or decorating fortune cookies for trendy edible decor table displays.