Lifestyle

Christmas Your Ride: 5 Festive Ways to Decorate Your Bike

Our guide to making your bike look as festive as you feel...

If you’ve never looked at your bicycle and wondered how to make it look like it belongs to Santa Claus, you are clearly not thinking creatively enough.

Because if your bike is an extension of you (we all know that it is), logic follows that it should get the same festive makeover as you do. So when you pull on that Christmas jumper, remember that your steed feels left out.

Must Have Bicycle Christmas Tree Decorations

Here are some of our ideas as to how you can create a fully thematic, pedal-powered Christmas.

Candy stripe bar tape

Ready for a refresh of your bar tape? Time to go get yourself some red and white stuff (handily, Chain Reaction allows you to sort products by colour) – apply the two tapes using painstaking mathematical calculations – or with crossed fingers – and voila! If it sounds complicated, then there is a really great tutorial at Mission Bicycle here.

How to: Wrap Bar Tape

Alternatively, make life easier for yourself and pick up some pre-striped goodness.

Battery powered fairy lights

We love something that makes our bikes more beautiful and visible at the same time. Get out the Sellotape because you’re about to try and attach a set of battery-powered fairy lights (like these) to your bicycle without any of the bits becoming a safety hazard.

Stocking Fillers for Cyclists

Please be VERY careful that no wiring gets caught somewhere it shouldn’t. But once you’ve ensured that your lighting arrangement has integrity, you can joyfully zoom around the neighbourhood feeling smug about how bloomin’ Christmas-y you look. SO FESTIVE.

Spoke accessories

Ok, so we’re not a massive fan of the weird, non-shiny tinsel on the bike above. But the spoke accessorising is something we can certainly get on board with.

Christmas Gifts for Cycling Households

These cardboard candy canes are the perfect means by which to inject some festive cheer into your steed, and the fact they’ll make your bike sound like a jet engine (maybe) is an added bonus. We suggest experimenting with even more seasonal designs: snowflakes, anyone?

Christmas tunes

Don’t want to ruin your bicycle aesthetic by applying layers of Xmas tat? Boo you! But ok then. There may be a way for you to get involved without spending the next few weeks replacing blown fairy-light bulbs.

Cool Bike Gadgets: Portable Music Devices

We introduce: the bicycle speaker. A way for you to blare the entirety of the Phil Spector Christmas album (or, of course, our Christmas workout playlist) throughout your ride without wearing headphones. Will everyone you meet on the road despise you? Almost certainly. But they are Grinches.

Add Rudolph!

Handlebar Heroes are for children. We accept this fact. But they’ve started doing RUDOLPHS for Christmas. How adorable is that?

Where to ride your festive bike? 8 Festive Rides Around the UK

And unlike funky children’s helmets, the fact that we’re adult sized doesn’t impact on our ability to purchase and use these accessories. They’ll help provide us with a Merry Christmas indeed.

Still Christmas shopping for the cyclist in your life? Check out our gift guides…

Christmas Gifts Road Cycling Women

Christmas Gifts for MTB Women

Christmas Gifts for Commuter Cyclists