Cool Yule Is your Christmas tree 2018 enough?
It’s almost time to deck the halls, but there’s more to Christmas decorations than choosing fir or fake, says Jessica Doyle
While Victorian tradition dictates that you don’t put up your tree until the afternoon of Christmas Eve, for most of us that seems far too late.
This weekend marks the moment when many of us start considering options, and sales of trees – from Nordmann fir to fake – begin in earnest.
According to the British Christmas Tree Growers Association, it’s now perfectly acceptable to buy your tree from December 1 onwards – it should still have its needles by the big day – with the start of Advent (the fourth Sunday before Christmas, falling on December 2 this year) becoming increasingly popular.
The good news is that there are now plenty of options, from a classic spruce to a pre-lit artificial fir or a minimalist design in wood, metal or wire. So, before you make your choice, here are some key tree trends for Christmas 2018 to bear in mind…
Fake versus real
Time was, fake Christmas trees had naff connotations, but they are fast becoming the fashionable choice: a survey by the garden centre Squires suggests that more than half of us (53per cent) plan to go faux this year, and John Lewis is on course for sales of artificial trees to be up 20per cent, year on year. A fake tree could, paradoxically, be the eco-friendly choice if reused for at least 10 years, after which time it will have offset the impact of cutting down (and then disposing of) a real tree each year.
Interior designer Sophie Paterson has chosen a fake tree for aesthetic, as well as practical reasons.
“They are so much easier and less messy,” she says. “The shape generally suits most interiors better, as they tend to need less floor space while being relatively tall, so you still get lots of impact without the tree taking up too much room.
“I’ve had my Balsam Hill one for five years and it still looks as good as new. I also like the fact you can put up a fake tree earlier, so it lengthens the Christmas period at home.”
Paterson recommends a pre-lit tree for the ultimate in easy assembly. “They are life-changing,” she says. “I used to dread having to untangle all the fairy lights; a pre-lit one takes out 80 per cent of the hassle.”
Size matters
John Lewis buyer Dan Cooper (nickname Mr Christmas), admits to having no fewer than five trees in his own home, the biggest of which will, this year, be a 9ft Korean fir. For those who have the space, demand for larger trees is on the up, with six-footers the most desirable option.
But a big tree squeezed into a small room does nothing but overwhelm the furniture. And, as living spaces become ever smaller, the mini-tree trend has come to the fore in recent years. Habitat’s Arran tree, a twiggy design wrapped in either cream or multicoloured wool, comes in a bijou 21in-high version, aimed squarely at small-space dwellers, while Cox & Cox sells a “hanging tree” made from natural birch branches strung together with jute, which can be hung from a hook on the wall, eating up no floor space whatsoever.
Taking the mini tree to the extreme is the online florist Bloom & Wild, which sells a real tree small enough to be posted through your letterbox. It comes with battery-powered fairy lights, teeny baubles and a flat-packed “pop-up” pot, and although you won’t be able to fit many presents underneath, it would add a bit of sparkle to a table or shelf.
More is more
“The biggest overall trend for Christmas this year is colour,” says Dan Cooper. John Lewis’s standout festive range this year is Rainbow, which, Cooper claims, “embodies positivity and inclusiveness, encouraging you to experiment and be adventurous”. It also makes decorating easier, he adds, as, rather than sticking to a single colour scheme, you can pull old and new decorations together into a multicoloured look.
The shops’s rainbow-styled tree – with red baubles at the top, graduating through orange, yellow, green and blue to violet ones at the bottom – might take a bit of work to recreate, but it certainly packs a decorative punch.
The Mexican, Frida Kahlo-inspired trend that has also filtered into Christmas decorations this year, means there are plenty of brightly coloured baubles and ornaments to be found on the high street.
You could even opt for a coloured tree itself. Homebase has taken inspiration from the unlikely source of hairdressing to produce a dip-dyed, or “tip-dyed” one: its 6.5ft fake-fir Ombre Tree is black at the bottom, green in the middle and fades from silver to white at the top. Buyer Rebecca Young suggests taking the look further by spraying the tip with rose-gold Rust-oleum metallic paint for a bit of “extra sparkle” – and decorating it with metallic baubles to match.
The unconventional option
London’s hotels and restaurants have been upping the ante on showstopping trees in recent years, and 2018 is no exception. At Aqua Shard, event stylists Bompas & Parr have installed what they describe as an “interactive snow globe” – a Perspex “tree” filled with scraps of paper that are blown around by fans – while the A-lister’s favourite restaurant Scott’s has commissioned fashion designer Christopher Kane, who has adorned its indoor tree with transparent neon tubes lit by LED.
At Claridge’s, where Karl Lagerfeld created an upside-down tree last year, Diane von Furstenberg has designed a non-standard tree that resembles the trunk of an oak, decorated with 8,000 hand-painted silver-leaf leaves. Naturally, none of these would be particularly easy to reproduce at home, but fragrance brand Diptyque’s first UK Christmas-tree collaboration – comprising two scented trees in the lobby of Hotel Café Royal in Soho – is a deceptively simple idea that could easily be copied: the trees are sprayed with the brand’s Sapin de Lumiere and Cypress room sprays throughout the day.
Decorations with a difference
Red and green, silver and gold, or all-white are always popular choices for those who favour a themed tree, but designers are starting to think outside the box with more fashionled baubles and ornaments.
“This year, there’s a real move towards expressing your own personal style through how you decorate your Christmas tree,” says Sam Hood, co-founder and creative director of online homeware shop Amara, who styled an animal-print themed tree for this year’s festive campaign. “We’ve seen a real draw to our more wild styles, such as our tiger head and leopard-print adorned baubles.”
To recreate this safari vibe at home, try a combination of tiger, cheetah and panther decorations from Amara, H&M or John Lewis, interspersed with gold or amber baubles (John Lewis does a faux-fur amber bauble that would work well), and consider carrying the theme over to your table decorations, too, with animal-print runners and napkins. If that doesn’t get Christmas off to a roaring start, what will?