Given that December 25 will come any day now (and trust me, it will), it’s a good idea to start decorating your tree. You’ve probably been doing it the same way since you can remember: you have all the ornaments (homemade and store-bought), festive garlands (always optional) and the perfect topper ready to go. You’ve mentally prepared yourself to coil endless strands of lights around and around those branches until you grow tired — but truth be told, you’re most likely hanging them wrong, at least that’s what one expert is saying.
Designer Francesco Bilotto told HouseBeautiful.com last year some valuable, life-changing advice, and it’s getting resurfaced again in case you didn’t hear the ground-breaking news the first time. Instead of wrapping lights around your tree like you usually do, it’s better to hang them vertically for full exposure.
“This way every tip of your tree, from branch to branch, will twinkle with delight,” Bilotto, who first introduced this concept on the TODAY show, said, and no bulbs will get stuck in the middle of the tree.
“Another added bonus is when you dismantle your tree and take off the lights, it’ll be easier and less messy to remove strands from the exterior of the tree,” the designer continued.
To pull this off, take the side of your lights without the plug and hang it from top to bottom, weaving it through the branches if need be. Then, work your way back up. Repeat this until your entire tree is covered, and make sure there are three or four inches between each strand. So, instead of wrapping the bulbs around your tree in waves, think of it as making streams of light rain down from your Christmas tree topper.
Watch the video below for clarification:
It all sounds so delightful — really, it does — but is it worth turning your back on tradition? Do you want to throw away all those years of horizontally hanging your lights? It’s like going your entire life folding your pizza pre-bite only to be told that you’re doing it wrong. Or, for optimal flavor, there’s a better way to eat your favorite slice. Here you were thinking you knew what you were doing and someone had to come along and steal your thunder.
We’ll let you be the judge of that because either way, your tree (or pizza) will be thoroughly enjoyed.
Before you make any judgements, though, check out these examples of vertically-decorated trees that seem to follow Bilotto’s instructions:
If you’ve already devoted hours (days, even) to your tree, we’re not asking you to start from scratch. And some of you will be perfectly happy decorating how you’ve always decorated (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it). But these trees do look spectacular, so maybe those who haven’t unpacked their Christmas tree lights from the attic yet will want to give it a go.
It’s 2017 after all — let’s change it up, shall we?
