Artificial Christmas Trees - Unlit or Pre-lit; That is the Question.
As the holiday season approaches we start thinking about decorating our home for the holidays. Of course, the Christmas tree is often the primary focal point of all the décor; where’s the best location for maximum impact, what size is appropriate for our home, should we do themed decorations and lighting, etc. While I love a good live Christmas tree, since nothing can replace that wonderful aroma, I am a fan of the artificial variety as well. I’d like to discuss the topic of artificial Christmas trees, some of my experiences with them, recommendations, and investment options.
Scandinavian Loft living room with a Christmas tree. This image was created by AI.
Fourteen years ago, after I graduated from college and moved into an apartment with my other half, Jeffry, we purchased our first artificial pre-lit Christmas tree. It was a nice variety, looked full, and was super convenient because it already was strung with lights. It lasted all of three years before the lights went out. We spent WAY too long trying to find the burned out bulb or cause of the outage, to no avail, so we went and replaced it with another pre-lit tree. Sadly, the story of the second was much the same as the first; it lasted maybe 3-4 years before the lights started going out on us. We replaced that tree after moving to Vancouver, BC. This third tree was of the artificial pre-lit variety again, though a different brand or manufacturer than our first two. And you can guess what happened at this point. It lasted three years up until just after we moved to San Francisco. I was fed up with this endless tree replacement saga since I expected artificial trees to last a long time, that is kind of the point here, and many of them are not inexpensive. We weren’t buying top of the line trees by any means, but we’d probably spent about $900 at that point. I felt like the GIF below.
When I took a moment to sit down and think though the right solution for our Christmas tree situation, I remembered that my parents purchased a 9’ artificial unlit tree and had it for around 20 years before it fell apart. Jeffry and I decided to go that route since it’s much cheaper and easier to replace a strand of lights than the entire tree so we could keep the tree for a long time. I started looking around for them and was shocked at how difficult it was to find a decent selection of bare artificial trees that weren’t pre-lit; we searched for days to finally find one that we liked and it arrived just a few days before Christmas due to shipment delays. Needless to say, we plan on keeping this tree for quite a long time and simply spend a little bit of extra time stringing it with our own lights (Jeffry does all the work), instead of flushing money down the toilet the cycle of pre-lit tree replacements.
So, something to consider for yourself- having an unlit artificial tree lasts much longer than a pre-lit tree and it also means a reduction of these trees that go into landfill. It will save potentially a good sum of money over the long term and it’s much easier to replace your own light strands if something goes wonky with them than the ones that come with the pre-lit variety.
Lastly, I’m happy to report that I’m starting to see an expanding number of unlit artificial Christmas tree options available at various of vendors. I’ll make it easy for you to shop some options with my clickable digital shopping list below. Some of trees come have color and size options for each variety. If you’d like some further Christmas tree help related to what size is right for your space, check out my other blog. What’s the right Christmas tree height for my room? I hope you’ve found this blog helpful. Happy Holidays!
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Shopping List
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