Most people with artificial Christmas trees spend their time trying to solve the wrong problem. They add more ornaments, more lights, more garland. They fluff branches until the tree looks as full and dense as possible. The result is a tree that’s undeniably lush — and undeniably fake.

Interior designer Orlando Soria has a different diagnosis. According to him, the fullness itself is actually part of the problem.

Why Fake Trees Look Fake

Soria’s core observation is simple: real trees don’t look like perfect triangles. They have gaps. They have branches that extend at irregular angles rather than filling in evenly on all sides. They have spacing — actual space between the branches where you can see into the tree rather than just looking at a solid wall of green needles.

Artificial trees are manufactured to be maximally full and symmetrical. That uniformity looks impressive in the box, but it looks artificial on a stand in your living room because no tree that grew in a forest ever looked that way. “That’s just not the way most real branches look,” Soria says. “The structure and look of a real tree with spacing between branches just looks more elegant, and real.”

The fix is almost counterintuitive: flatten the branches out rather than fanning them upward and outward to maximum fullness. Pull them down and extend them horizontally in a way that creates the layered, spaced-out look of an actual evergreen tree branch.

The Flat Branch Trick

When you’re setting up your tree, work branch by branch and push each one flat rather than fluffing it into a pom-pom shape. Real tree branches don’t explode outward in all directions — they extend horizontally with some natural downward droop, especially toward the tips. You want layers of branches you can actually see between, not a seamless cone of needles.

This will make the tree look less full in the conventional sense — but it will look dramatically more real. Think about the difference between a trimmed hedge and an actual tree branch. One is dense and geometric. The other has structure and depth.

Soria also notes that trees styled this way will better show off the decorations placed on them, since the ornaments won’t disappear into a thicket of branches.

The Center Pole Problem — and How to Solve It

One trade-off with the flat branch approach: flattening and spacing the branches can make the center pole more visible. This is where the second part of Soria’s technique comes in.

Place shiny ornaments deep inside the tree, close to the pole, throughout the whole height of the tree. The reflective surface of the ornaments catches and scatters light, drawing the eye away from the pole and creating the illusion of depth and dimension inside the tree. “I like to place them liberally on the interior of the tree, close to the pole,” Soria says.

This trick works best with ball ornaments that have high shine — they act almost like mirrors inside the tree, bouncing light around and making the interior of the tree glow rather than creating a dark, visible structural center.

Choosing the Right Tree

Soria points out that not all artificial trees are created equal when it comes to this technique. Trees with molded, realistic branches — ones that have actual shape and texture built into the branch itself rather than just clusters of needles stuck on a wire — respond much better to the flat styling approach because they have something real to work with.

Highly stylized, ultra-uniform triangle trees are harder to make look natural regardless of how you style them. If you’re buying a new tree and realism is the goal, look for trees with PE (polyethylene) branches rather than PVC — they’re typically molded from actual branch casts and have significantly more realistic texture and color variation.

But even with a mid-range artificial tree, the flat branch approach will move you meaningfully closer to real-tree energy than any amount of extra ornaments ever will. The instinct to add more to make a fake tree look better is understandable. Sometimes the answer is actually to do less.

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