Homecoze Christmas Tree Buying Guide
What size, which colour and what are Optic Fibre trees!?🎄
Christmas trees are one of the biggest highlights of the festive season and whether it's the main focal point of your living room or festively welcoming your guests in the entryway, you’ll want a Christmas tree that is going to fit perfectly within your home. With over 90+ different Christmas Tree's available, here are a few key factors to consider when buying your tree.
Placement
Where are you going to put your tree? The living room is a great family space to gather around your tree for gift giving, or a tree in the foyer to festively welcomes guests into your home. A compact tree in the dining room can bring the Christmas cheer to your meal times and a colour changing fibre optic tree in a bedroom creates a wondrously enchanting Christmas glow for bedtime. There are many ways and places to display Christmas tree’s throughout your home; consider these points when picking your perfect place.
Visibility – Your tree is often the focal point of your home during the festive season. Placing it in the center or the corner of a large room commands attention of your masterpiece.
Foot Traffic – To avoid any accidents, make sure you allow adequate clearance between your tree and doors or walkways. It may pay to allow extra space for gifts too!
Furniture – You may need to rearrange furniture to make room for your tree. However, consider saving the hassle by using a smaller table top tree or a compact space saving tree.
Lighting – Sunlight brightens your space, so ensure to leave space for light to filter in and avoid placing your tree where direct light shines through as it can highlights gaps in the tree.
Power Source – Don’t forget about your Christmas Lights! To avoid using extension cords across the room, try to place your tree near an accessible power outlet.
Safety – Avoid placing your Christmas Tree around heaters, fireplaces or candles.
Sizing
The first step to narrowing down your tree selection is sizing. An extra large tree in a small room can make the space look cramped and if the tree is too tall it may prevent you from placing a topper atop of the tree. On the other hand a small tree tucked away in the corner of a spacious living room can get lost in sight and is less noticeable.
Regardless of the height of your room, you should aim for a Christmas tree that is no closer than 15cm from the ceiling. If you plan to use a tree topper (such as a large star) atop the tree, it is best to look for a tree that is about 30cm shorter than your ceiling. For most Australian homes the standard ceiling height is 2.4m, which generally makes a 7ft (2.1m) Christmas Tree the most popular choice.
The below size chart is a good rule of thumb for choosing the height of your tree.
|
Christmas Tree Height |
Recommendations |
|
Tabletops, office counters, bedrooms, small spaces |
|
|
Smaller rooms or areas with lower ceilings |
|
|
Standard popular size for most Australian ceilings |
|
|
Larger rooms with higher ceilings |
|
|
Foyers, extra tall ceilings, Christmas displays |
Note – As tree’s get taller, they also get wider too! Be sure to measure your floor space and check the base diameter of the tree to ensure it fits within the area available.
Tree Tips
When buying a Christmas tree, the number of tree tips refers to the number of needles on the tree (needles are the ‘leaves’ on the branches, inspired by the pine-needle tree from which most Christmas trees are based off). In general, the higher the tip count, the more expensive the tree. A higher tip count is usually preferred as it means there are more needles on the branches creating a thicker, more full and realistic looking tree. The more tips on the tree, the more decorations the tree can also support. Having more tree tips also means that less space filling decorations are required to fill in the gaps in the tree, which makes trees with a higher tip count great for both minimalist as well as extravagant decorating.
Whilst cheaper tree’s with lesser tips may not appear as full, they can be made to look fuller by using larger space-filling decorations such as ribbons, garlands and tinsel in additional to your decorations to help fill in the gaps and hide the trees trunk.
Look out for our Christmas Tree’s marked with “Extra full” – these trees have the highest tip count for their size!
Colour
This part is up to you. We offer a range of options to suit any décor style, including Classic Green, Flocked Green with Light Snow Coated Tips, Flocked Green with Heavy Snow Coated Tips (for a wondrous White Christmas festive vibe!), White Christmas Tree, Pine-Needle Blend and then we also have a range of self lit Optic Fibre tree’s too!
Lighting
The final decision to make when purchasing a Christmas tree is whether you want pre-installed lights, or if you plan to add your own lights. Buying a tree without lights gives you the benefit of being able to select the exact style, colour and quantity of lights that you would like to have. However, it also means that you will need to purchase them separately and install them your self after you have set up the tree. Alternately, we have some pre-lit trees to save you the hassle.
Our self-lit Optic Fibre tree's have clear optic fibre tree tips mixed in with the green tree tips. These trees are considered self lit because all you need to do is plug them in, fluff the branches out, and turn them on. There are no 'strings' of Christmas lights, all the lighting is built-in within the tree. These trees can be one colour or mixed colour and usually have an inbuilt 'twinkling' effect to the lighting. These trees do generally have a lower tree tip count making them a better budget option or where a quick and easy setup is required.
We also have a range of LED-combo trees that come pre-wrapped with Christmas string lights. This saves you the time and hassle of wrapping your own lights around the tree once it is set up. All you need to do is fluff the branches, plug it in, and select between the 8 adjustable lighting modes included.
Once you have chosen your tree, don't forget to check out our fluffing guide here to ensure you get the most fullest look out of your tree!
