Choosing an 8ft pre-lit Christmas tree
An 8ft Christmas tree is for a room with height to spare, and it looks its best where a seven-foot tree would leave an obvious gap overhead. "For rooms with grander proportions and particularly high ceilings, our 8ft and 9ft trees look fantastic," says our design director, Fred. At 240cm, an 8ft tree needs a ceiling of about 2.7m to leave room for a topper, which is more than many homes have, so measure before you fall for one.
Height changes how a tree is seen. A tree this tall is looked up at and taken in from across the room, so its shape has to hold from a distance as well as close up. The Nordmann Fir shape carries that well: 4,754 tips over 64 branches keep an 8ft tree full from every angle, the top included.
The 8ft pre-lit Christmas tree carries 1,200 warm white micro-LEDs. The 8ft unlit tree is the same tree without them, and it is the tallest of our trees to come unlit.
8-foot or 9-foot Christmas tree: what the extra foot brings
The 9ft tree is not simply the 8ft stretched. It has 90 branches to the 8ft's 64, and 6,335 tips to its 4,754: a third more foliage for 30cm more height, so it looks denser as well as taller. Yet it is only 10cm wider, at 175cm against 165cm, which means the extra height costs very little extra floor. That makes nine feet the height for a double-height hallway, a tall space, or an open-plan room with a very high ceiling, where there is plenty of height to fill but not much floor to give up.
The 9ft tree is pre-lit only, with 1,300 warm white micro-LEDs. At both heights, the Silverton rattan tree skirt comes in a matching 8ft or 9ft size, handwoven from natural rattan to finish the base of a tree this large.
