How to Decorate a Christmas Tree: 4 Steps

Decorating a Christmas tree isn’t just about throwing a string of lights over the tree, but it’s about following a set of procedures to decorate it in such a way that it evokes the holiday spirit in everyone who sees it. 5-Minute Crafts ensures that you’ll have fun with the process if you follow the steps provided below.

Choosing a theme

Once you have your Christmas tree ready, you can decide on the color scheme or theme to make your tree look complete. Here are a few themes you can choose from:

• Classic theme

This theme includes the classic Christmas colors like greens and reds. You can decorate your tree with vivid red ornaments, ribbons, and garlands. You can add more pizzazz to it by adding metallic ornaments of gold or silver.

• Warm or Cool theme

Depending on the color scheme of your room, you can either go with warm colors and ornaments with red undertones or cool colors and ornaments with blue undertones.

• Metallic theme

Gold and silver decorative pieces are one of the easiest things to adorn a Christmas tree with. But feel free to include some navy, cream tones, and glitter, and wrap the gifts with shiny paper as a cherry on top.

• Upside-down theme

Nowadays, upside-down Christmas trees are a trend that requires you to hang them on a ceiling or buy a free-standing tree that stands on its head.

• Santa Claus theme

Just like pumpkins are for Halloween, candy canes are for Christmas. Hang up all the candy canes, tiny belt buckles, and other Santa-related ornaments you can find, and top it with a Santa hat.

• Batman theme

This theme is mostly preferred by pop-culture enthusiasts. You can buy the mask and cape from a costume store and decorate the tree with the usual ornaments. You can also try other characters like Darth Vader, The Grinch, and many more.

Gathering the decorative ornaments and lights

Lights

1. If you do have some old string lights, don’t unravel them all at once. First, plug them in to check if each bulb is working or not. If a few don’t, try tightening them a bit. If they still don’t work, it’s time to buy some new lights. If they do work, unplug them from the socket and begin the unraveling.

2. If you’re buying the new lights, you need to make sure that the length of your string-LED lights will be long enough to cover your tree. Let’s assume that one set of lights is 11 yards and has 100 bulbs in every cable. The following guidelines may come in handy for you:

• 5-foot Christmas tree — 1 set

• 6-foot Christmas tree — 2 sets

• 7-foot Christmas tree — 3 sets

• If you’re going to use multiple sets, keep an extension cord handy.

Ornaments

If you have Christmas tree ornaments from previous years, feel free to use them. If you’re planning for a thematic Christmas tree, then you can browse the ornament sets available online. Some ornaments commonly used on a Christmas tree are bells, reindeer, candles, candy canes, garlands, stockings, wreaths, snow globes, and angels. You can also put up a family heirloom on your Christmas tree.

• A tree-topper adds a finishing touch to your Christmas tree. You can go for an angel, a star, or any customized tree topper that will keep the holiday tradition alive. There are a lot of options available online to choose from.

Decorating the tree

Lights

1. Plug the lights into the socket, and starting from the bottom, wrap the cable around the tree all the way to the top. Don’t wrap them top to bottom because when you start from the bottom, you can hide the wire and the socket that are connected to the plug. You don’t want to show the plug connected to the socket so be sure to separate a strand directly reaching the top. Otherwise, it will disrupt the flow and look of the lights.
2. Make sure you distribute the lights evenly on the twigs and branches. Focus on the rows, branches, and center, and not on the outer perimeter because the outer perimeter is meant for the ornaments to be hung later.
3. Tuck the wires into the depth of the tree so that they remain hidden.
4. The plug of the lights must be fastened to the inner stalk or pole of the tree.
5. Step back to see if the lights look proper. If not, then make proper adjustments.
6. Then unplug the lights because there are other decorations to focus on, and the lights will create a distraction as you adorn the tree with whatever else.

Tree topper

Installing your tree topper before you add other ornaments helps you decide the number of ornaments that should be put on the rest of the tree. Also, if you decide to put on the tree topper at the end, it might topple or bother the arrangement of the other ornaments you’ve spent time putting into place.

Baubles

1. Begin with hanging larger ornaments first as they will take up more space on the tree. Be sure to hang the same ornaments at the same time with the help of the triangle method.

• The triangle method is a way to create visual triangles in the design, as is shown in the image above. It comes in handy because our eyes tend to move in triangles to process any design. So following this method is pleasing to the eyes and creates a harmonious flow as well.

2. After you’re done putting on the larger ornaments, repeat the same method with the leftover ornaments by sorting them by color or texture to make them evenly spread across the tree. Then work with the smaller ornaments using the same method.

Ribbons and garlands

Use the ribbons and garlands to fill up the gaps and to make the Christmas tree decor look fuller. You can cut one-foot sections of ribbon, then wrap or semi-tie them onto the branches to secure their position.

Light it up!

After the ribbons and finishing touches, it’s time to light up the Christmas tree. Make sure to turn the lights off before you go to sleep.