During the holiday season, the Christmas tree is the centerpiece of your home. Trim your tree with these inspirational decorating ideas.Decorate your Christmas tree with beautiful ornaments, garlands, and festive holiday lights. We’ve got decorating tips, ornament ideas, and lots of Christmas tree pictures for you!

Kids undecorate this tree! The ornaments are gifts in ribbon pouches, one to open each day starting December 1.
How to make Advent Tree

Forget the electric lights, make your room shine with an aluminum tree filled with removable branches and a central trunk. Decorate with balls and swags in one or two colors.

Japanese-lantern ornaments provide a pleasing change of scale on this artificial bonsai, but the crowning glories of this tree are the birds — coated in glitter and grouped in flocks of like colors.
How to make Asian-Inspired Christmas Tree

A far cry from Charlie Brown’s sad sapling, this snow-white tree is meant to be trim. The original base was replaced with a shapely, sand-filled lacquer vase; the homemade 3-D ornaments are made from bits of fabric stitched together and stuffed with quilt batting.
How to make

A tree covered in candy. Is there a child anywhere who could imagine a happier sight? Although the sweet beasts and baubles on the tree are not intended to be eaten, their components are delectable.
How to make Candy Tree

Instead of store-bought trimmings, dress your tree with what it might have worn outside pinecones.
How to make Cinnamon Bird Ornament

With a few bags of cotton balls, you can blanket a tree with the softest snow.
How to make Cotton Ball Tree

These handmade ornaments look good enough to eat.
How to make Faux Tart Ornaments

There’s no such thing as too many holiday treats. Made from wrapping paper, these simple containers can hang from a Christmas-tree form (like the one at left), holding candy or very small presents.
How to make Favor Tree

Nearly weightless ornaments seem to hover rather than hang. The honeycomb paper, cut into curvy forms, opens into translucent layers. Vintage metallic beads are used as accents.
How to make Floating Ornaments

Sheets of foil are twisted and scrunched into stars, balls, and canes, all hung with yarn. Turn cupcake liners inside out; stack, and then glue back-to-back; tie on yarn to hang. Poke string lights through small liners for a radiant glow.
How to make

A Christmas tree dusted with snow looks even frostier when decorated exclusively in shades of silver, white, and cream. Simple paper-and-glitter ornaments mix well with vintage metallic pieces. Glitter ornaments are easy to make and can be saved from year to year.
How to make Frosted Tree

This is the perfect tree for gardeners. We turned vintage seed packets into templates you can download; print on card stock, and cut out with scissors.
How to make Gardener’s Tree

An entire village of gingerbread houses adorns this tree, creating tempting trimmings. The windows and doors have been crafted from dough that is different from the facades — the lighter one is sweetened with honey, the darker with molasses — to provide contrast.
How to make Gingerbread Tree

Take inspiration from our themed trees embellished with garlands, ornaments, and tree toppers.Up the elegance of this year’s evergreen with beautiful celestial symbols. Delicate silvery angels flit among hand-tied ribbon stars.
How to make Heavenly Tree

Using a few readily available materials, you can make ornaments that will become treasured heirlooms even before they’ve spent a season on the tree: Shape wired tinsel into sparkling stars, beads into snowflakes, and sumptuous fabrics into small decorative globes. Even humble materials like buttons and wood can be transformed into distinctive decorations. The finished ornaments may be hung from the tree, used to embellish packages, or given as gifts. Wherever they end up, they will surely become Christmas keepsakes for family, friends, and yourself.
How to make Heirloom Tree

These stockings are just large enough to hold a small gift or sweet for each of the 24 days of Advent.
How to make Mini Stocking Tree

Office-supply stores have all the trimmings for a tree that belies its workaday origins. Key tags decorated with stickers, ornaments cut from file folders, and paper-clip chains dangle from the branches. A bubble-packaging tree skirt and presents dressed up in graph paper, stickers, and rubber bands circle the base.
How to make Office Supply Tree

Although there is no widespread Christmas tradition in Japan, people have learned a lesson of peace and goodwill from Sadako, a little girl who developed leukemia after the 1945 Hiroshima bombing. She learned of a legend that said if a person folded 1,000 paper cranes, the gods might grant his or her wish to become well. Although Sadako never reached her goal, after her death her classmates folded enough cranes to make up the difference. Since then, people all over the world have sent folded cranes to Hiroshima.
How to make Origami Tree

A pyramid of dried pinecones dressed with silver spray paint conceals the tree stand of this Fraser fir.
How to make

Instead of store-bought trimmings, dress your tree with what it might have worn outside pinecones.
How to make Pinecone Christmas Tree

With its pipe-cleaner candles, this small fir recalls a time when Christmas trees were brightened with flame.
How to make the Pipe-Cleaner Christmas Tree

In Poland, where the Christmas season is seen as a time of renewal, ornaments are fashioned from straw to symbolize thanksgiving for the harvest and hope for good things in the coming year. Eggs represent the promise of future prosperity, too.
How to make Polish Tree

Made of woolly white pom-poms, felt, and ribbon, this frosty friend never has to melt. Just add a loop to the hat, and he becomes an ornament.
How to make Pom-Pom Snowman Ornament

Consider a monochromatic scheme. For this tree, we used only red and white ornaments to create a festive display.

According to the legend of the Christmas rose, a poor shepherdess named Madelon was tending her sheep on a hill near Bethlehem one snowy night when she saw the wise men bearing gifts on their way to visit the Christ child. Madelon wept, knowing that she could not afford a present for the new king. Just then an angel appeared and turned the girl’s fallen tears into pale pink roses. A joyous Madelon gathered the blooms and carried them to Bethlehem to give to the baby Jesus. Since that time, the Christmas rose (in fact not a rose at all but a hellebore) blooms each December as a reminder of this loving gift.
How to make Rose Tree

Conceal a Christmas tree stand with a lovely scalloped tree skirt. The skirt is made of felt, which won’t fray, and has one open seam, so refilling the stand with water is a snap.
How to make Scalloped Felt Tree Skirt

Channeling childhood summers spent on Cape Cod, crafts director Hannah Milman created a from-the-sea tree. These shell ornaments are dusted with two shades of glitter and blended for a dazzling ombre effect.
How to make Sea-Inspired Tree

In both Ukrainian and German lore, the tale of the Christmas spider explains the origin of tinsel. The story tells of a poor widow who couldn’t buy fancy gifts for her children or decorations for their tree. One Christmas Eve, she decorated a tree as best she could with fruits and nuts. After she went to sleep, spiders came out and crawled over the tree, leaving their webs behind. When Father Christmas visited the house, he saw the web-covered tree and decided to turn the webs to silver. In the morning when the family awoke, the tree was sparkling and beautiful.
How to make Tinsel Tree

With its boughs pruned, this Norway spruce can accommodate twice as many ornaments. Ribbon attached to wire lets ornaments hang securely from branches while unifying the color scheme.
How to Trim Tree

Back when the lights on Christmas trees were candle flames, bobeches formed protective collars to catch dripping wax. After electric bulbs replaced wicks and flames, the embellishments took on a purely ornamental role as pretty reflectors of light until they passed out of fashion in the 1970s. You can re-create this old-fashioned sparkle by slipping homemade poinsettia bobeches over strings of lights.
How to make Twinkling Flowers

Curious little hands can’t help but be drawn to the irresistible magic of a Christmas tree. With an unbreakable tree, you can let them explore without worry. Nylon threads provide invisible support for a small tree, which is decorated entirely with easy-to make, kid-proof ornaments.
How to make Unbreakable Tree

Use snow-in-a-can or even flour to create a beautiful dusting of “snow” on your tree.
How to make White Flocked Tree

An assortment of colorful candy holders and basket ornaments creates a striking effect against a white tree.
How to make Hanging-Basket Ornaments

Create an entire village of shimmering houses and churches in the boughs of your tree, nestling them among glittering balls and baubles.
How to make Winter Village Tree

Pom-poms, tassels, and snowflakes made of vibrant yarn create a cozy, crafty theme for a tree. A sewing basket is a fitting container (the tree sits in a separate pot surrounded by gravel); the gifts are wound with yarn.
How to make Yarn Tree