It must look like Christmas

THE festive season is upon us, and here our thoughts naturally turn to Christmas ideas and all the ways to bring a little extra joy to our homes, via food, decorations and lots of lovely gifts. With a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine, we’re looking at our absolute favourite Christmas ideas and planning what to do and when!

The is the centrepiece of your living room — or rather of your entire house — during the festive season and the most important aspect of your Christmas decorations, not to mention the destination for all of those beautiful Christmas gifts. An angel or star should go at the top of the tree, with presents at the bottom and lots of decorations in between.

Artificial Christmas trees and natural trees alike need the right trimmings. Don’t forget to check out our favourite baubles to add the finishing touches to your perfect tree, tips for decorating with fairy lights, as well as our innovative ideas for alternative trees, which are perfect for even the smallest of spaces.

Decorating a Christmas tree is an essential activity at this time of year. Fairy lights twinkling in the window, cheerful baubles weighing down every branch, and a stack of beautifully wrapped Christmas gifts underneath — what could be jollier?

From the most traditional to the slightly unusual, here’s how to decorate your Christmas tree . . .

Choose your fairy lights

Fairy lights add a lot of atmosphere and warmth to a tree: a Christmas tree can appear as a bit of a dark hulk without them. Always choose ‘warm white’ lights rather than colder tones, these are so much cosier and less brash. Always keep the lights on a ‘still’ setting: there are few things more irritating and distracting than flashing Christmas lights.

Use connectible lights

Start with one length of lights, unreeling as you go, from the bottom to the top, circling round the tree. Our favourite lights are the connectible LEDs Because each string connects to the next end-to-end you never have to worry about tangles, and can work from one power point. Push the lights quite deep into the branches of the tree. You want them to twinkle subtly, which they will, even from deep within the tree, but you don’t want to see too much unsightly cable.

Then add foliage

You can buy a good armful of foliage from a florist or flower market. Choose a mix of that is tonally different from your tree: think pale Eucalyptus or brighter green Ruscus. The different shades of green create visual depth and variation, which can bring a tree to life. Simply stuff the boughs of foliage into the tree, making it appear fuller and more generous.

Choose simple decorations

If you have given the tree sufficient backbone with good lights and foliage, you don’t need oodles of different decorations. Simply choose two or three elements and stick to them. It is easiest if these elements contrast, such as our combination of pressed tin and traditional red baubles in the image above. I like to keep decorations simple: I adore just using coloured balls, or candles for example. These Mexican pressed tin decorations are simple, inexpensive and sophisticated, and they go well with the plain red baubles.

Scale and quantity

It is a good idea to keep the scale of the baubles in keeping with the scale of the tree. We have a pretty huge tree here, so we went for big decorations, so that each could really hold its own.

You never need as many as you expect for an impactful look. For a tiny tree, miniature decorations would look adorable. You can find some very sweet miniature vintage glass. — houseandgarden.co.uk