Best Christmas Tree Decorating Tips

A stylist shares her top Christmas tree decorating tips

Whether your style leans toward traditional or progressive, here's how to decorate your Christmas tree to impress.

Dec 01, 2020 1:00pm

Decide on your style and get the whole family involved in decorating the Christmas tree!

Christmas is coming and you know what that means – time to bust out the Christmas tree. But how to decorate it?

The first thing you need to do is find your Christmas style. Are you a traditionalist at heart or do you prefer to break the rules with creative and contemporary Christmas decor that blends in seamlessly with the style of your home?

Here, stylist Jacinta Preston shares her seven simple steps for bringing your Christmas tree dreams to life.

1. What kind of Christmas tree?

The very first thing you need to ask yourself before decorating your Christmas tree is: which team are you on? Team conservative is all about traditional, handed-down, age-old style of Christmas tree and decorations. It's the trip down memory lane with a hint of nostalgia. Team progressive is fresh, new, up-to-date, and bang on trend with modern ideas. It can accommodate the latest and greatest and it's more fun 'cos it's anything and everything you want it to be.

Once you have chosen your side, you must choose a tree to suit! Whether it's fresh pine, coloured plastic, or even something homemade, the tree is your canvas so choose the right one to fit for your space and your theme.

2. Kid-friendly Christmas tree

Do you have kids or pets? If your answer is yes, then in reality your tree shouldn't be covered in Tiffany & Co crystal baubles. Instead, use decorations that are unbreakable, such as cotton-wool balls, felt and feathers.

Like all good design projects you need a plan. Create a moodboard to help you recognise your decorative destination, and more importantly, help you get there. Then, do a stocktake of your existing decorations so you know what you've got to work with and what you'll need to update.

Work with your existing style when decorating for Christmas. A single tree branch looks effective against the bright white walls and floors of this beach house on the South Coast of NSW. Photographer: James Henry

3. Pick your colour scheme

Team conservative will naturally go for the classic colour chord, with a complementary scheme of red and green, red and white, or metallics. Team progressive can do whatever takes their fancy and play around with different colours. I suggest a mix of pastels, brass and copper with a few pineapples thrown in.

4. Stick to your theme

This is not as easy as it seems but this is how the pros do it. It requires commitment, dedication and willpower to stay on just one theme. Keep any ideas you may have that are outside your current theme for next year's Christmas. It's all about doing one thing well.

Photographer: James Henry

5. Light it up

Or should I say lights, garlands, ornaments! Just about anything can be used to decorate a Christmas tree. In fact, you can decorate your tree with just lights, but only if you do it in absolute abundance.

There's no wrong way to decorate a tree, but I probably should tell you that I have never been a big fan of using children's handmade Christmas decorations.

Call me uncharitable, but most kindy projects are time-filler activities. And what on earth is the point of one (crappy) macaroni trinket in the middle of my (imaginary) Christmas-catalogue-perfect-family-life tree? If you must entertain the kids, have two trees. It's like having two bathrooms – there's the one that gets down and dirty, and then there's the pretty one. Let 'em go bananas on it. Hey, they can even decorate it with bananas!

Keep the hero ornaments for feature positions, usually front and centre at eye level, but don't forget to keep them evenly spaced, too. Photographer: John Paul Urizar

6. Finishing touches

It's all about spacing and layers. Keep the hero ornaments for feature positions, usually front and centre at eye level, but don't forget to keep them evenly spaced, too. Layer decorations deep on branches as well as at the front to create depth and richness to the overall look of the tree. For the crowning glory, an angel or a star sits atop Team Conservative's tree – beautiful, elegant and classic. And for Team Progressive it could be an origami lantern, a pom-pom, a wire hand, or even some antlers fashioned into a [tree topper].

7. Where to position your Christmas tree

Your tree is best positioned in a low-traffic corner, but still pride of place, smack-bang in the middle of things.

Truthfully, I love both a conservative and a progressive tree. My design style oscillates from season to season. This year I'm totally doing pom-pom garlands. My kids will be in major pom-pom production mode from November 1st, cranking out homemade pom-poms for present wrapping and present-topping perfection. Totes amazeballs!