How to Decorate Your Christmas Tree Like a Pro
Published: 06/11/2025
Step 1: Choose your Christmas tree.
The first thing to do is of course, choose your tree! There’s always a debate to be had with artificial and real, but we lean towards artificial. There’s no needles causing a mess that you’ll need to tidy up, and zero maintenence required for it. Purchase once, and have a beautiful Christmas tree year after year, that always looks its best!. As for size, you’ll need to figure out where you’re planning to put it, to make sure it fits your intended space.
Top tip: Go for a tree that is around a foot shorter than your ceiling. That way, there is plenty of room for your tree topper, without it looking squashed.
Our curated selection of Artificial Christmas Trees represents a wide range of high quality options, with different shapes or sizes. They’ll last for years, just make sure that it’s stored carefully, ensuring it is dry and free from dust for the remainder of the year. Reusing your Christmas tree each year makes it a sustainable option, a feel good factor for year after year. Plus, buying one artificial Christmas tree, instead of a new live tree year after year, will save you money in the long term.
Our favourite tree types are the Norway Spruce and the English Pine. Classic in shape with a deep, festive green colour, these stunning trees provide a beautiful base for whatever decorative style you choose.
Step 2: Free and fluff the branches.
When you first unbox your artificial tree, whether for the first time or because it’s been stored for a year, the branches tend to be very flat and often all point in one direction.
Grab some gloves (we’d recommend wearing long sleeves too), build your tree, then spend some time bending each main branch and offshoot to create a fluffed out luxurious look. It may take a while, we can promise the results will be worth it!
Step 3: Add your lights as the first decoration
Lights should be the first thing you put on your tree. We prefer trees that need lights supplied separately, as it gives you the freedom to change your lighting style and colour, which is a simple change from year to year, but provides a big impact. You’ll need to choose your lights just as carefully – opt for colours to match your room, or a classic clear for maximum sparkle.
Before you start arranging the lights on your tree, plug them in to check they’re all in working order after their year of storage. Once checked, start to wind your lights round from the base of the tree upwards. Place some strands towards the back, have some pulled forward, and alternate them being above and below branches.
Stand back and look for areas without lights, and adjust where you need to.
Top tip: You’ll need around 50–80 lights for every foot of tree for the best coverage. Adjust this by personal preference.
Step 4: Choose your colour scheme or theme.
Choosing a colour scheme for your Christmas tree and surrounding décor, or opting for a selection of coordinating textures, such as natural woods, felts and ceramics, will give your final look a pleasing aesthetic. We’ve pulled together 5 decorating themes for Christmas 2025, which are a fantastic point for inspiration.
There are plenty of things to consider when you set a colour scheme or theme. Colours are fantastic if you tend to change up your décor each year, as you can swap these in and out as the trends change over the years – especially if you want to be ahead of the game when it comes to future colours. It can also be a really clear way to remember your past Christmases, as you look back on pictures.
The alternative is to look at theming around a texture, so you might opt for a more rustic feeling look, or even a topic. If you want your tree to look larger, metallic or ultra high shine ornaments will help reflect light and colour, where if you want your tree to feel more family friendly, you might prefer less breakable felt ornaments and theme your décor around this.
Our Christmas Collections this year are based around festive drinks, so you can take inspiration from where you like!
Explore Our Christmas Collections
Top tip: Use a Colour Wheel to see which colours work well together. Colours opposite one another are the most complementary. Blue and yellow or pink and green make great pairings and can be easily translated into more festive tones of blue and gold or dark green and red. Finish with a white or other bright accent colour to tie your scheme together and add a beautiful pop of interest.
Step 5: Decorate to your heart’s content.
By sticking to a specific colour palette you can introduce plenty of bauble variations without it looking too much. This could include different sizes, styles and finishes, as well as finials, onions and other shapes.
Place your largest items towards the back of the branches to create depth and have the more delicate items on smaller tree limbs and further forward. Your decorations don’t always have to dangle. Baubles can be twisted over a branch multiple times to vary the hang length, birds on clips can perch on various offshoots, and faux flowers are a great way to add further interest while filling gaps and adding a consistent colour base.
A key tip here is to add faux foliage – which not only helps fill in the gaps in a natural way, but also allow you to add a bit of additional sparkle. Metallic decorations are a thriving trend, and adding these to your tree is a clever way to get the biggest effect from it.
Top tip: By using both traditional sized 8cm baubles with slightly larger 10cm ones, you can really see a difference in the depth and interest of your final result. Try to have at least six of each style or type to add consistency to your look.
It doesn’t have to be just baubles on the tree though. This year we’ve seen a surge of popularity in Christmas Bows, and a growing interest in adding faux flowers to the tree. There’s plenty of ways to do this, whether it’s something created specifically for the tree, like our snowy clip on Christmas Roses, or you add in different stems for the effect you’re looking for. Wired stems can be bent to the correct angle, allowing them to look like they’ve always belonged there…
Top tip: By buying seasonal artificial flowers, you can reuse them differently each year. One year you might form a beautiful bouquet, the next you may use a smaller stem for your tablescape and add the other foliage to your garlands or trees. You can make your Christmas décor feel completely new with the same, high-quality products used differently.
Step 6: Finishing touches
No tree is complete without a showstopping tree topper. Select the perfect match to your colour scheme or decorating theme with options including Santa hats, Glitter stars and traditional angels or fairies.
For a truly polished and professional look, you will want to hide the base area of your tree. Tree skirts or wicker baskets are the perfect option for this. Alternatively, some beautifully wrapped empty boxes that coordinate with your theme is a great way to finish off your tree, either while you wait for the real presents to arrive, or after they’ve all been opened.
Decorating the Christmas tree is what kickstarts a lot of people’s Christmas spirit. There is so much fun to be had being creative and getting the whole family involved, so pull on your Christmas jumper, get your favourite festive tunes playing, and see what masterpiece you can create!
This article was written on 28th November 2024, and updated in November 2025 for the new season.