The Secret to a Full & Fabulous Christmas Tree Look

Dan and Yves live in a gorgeous home in Chelsea that they’ve created a chic, farmhouse-style vibe in. They’ve done a great job decorating their small space for the holidays, and their Christmas tree is the crowning piece of decorating glory, a truly full and fabulous tree.

Yves and Dan describe how they decorated the Christmas tree in their small but chic Chelsea rental: We always decorate our tree in layers. We have a pre-lit tree, and we feel like our biggest challenge each year is remembering which cords to plug each other into so the whole thing lights up! Once we have figured that out, we generally start placing the larger-scale ornaments like oversized stars, bulbs and pine cones pretty strategically.

The biggest ornaments go in the lower section of the tree, but we also place them inside! You need to take a step back, look through the tree and fill in the holes with those larger ornaments wherever you can see through the tree. After that, like everything else, it’s all about balance and scale.

We also like adding ribbon leftovers that we cut up in 10-15 inch pieces; we roll them into a little ball-like shape and stick them inside the tree to block any visible space that would normally let light go through the tree. This will give the visual illusion that the tree is fuller than it really is.

From there, we start with the other ornaments, but we don’t follow a pattern or theme. Instead, we place them based on their coloring. Our ornaments are mostly gold, rose gold, silver, chrome, crystal and/or clear in nature, so making sure you don’t have two rose gold ornaments next to each other or two silver ornaments next to each other is key.

We also try to carefully make sure we don’t just hang ornaments on the tip of the branches — it’s important to hang them inside as well to make sure it looks layered.

Finally, it’s not only about ornaments for us. We like to use glittered tree sprays and fake botanical items. We normally do that last. It’s a balancing act and here we highly recommend looking at what you have. Lay it all out on the ground first and look at your tree again.

At the end of the day when it comes to our tree, our philosophy is there isn’t such a thing as having too many ornaments. The richer the better. You don’t want to go crazy and end up in a place where there are items upon items crammed two inches apart from each other, but it should feel full and opulent.

See more of Yves and Dan’s home in their house tour → Contemporary Farmhouse Chic in Chelsea

See more of their holiday decorated home → A Couple’s Chic Holiday-Decorated Chelsea Home, Small Space Style