Slim and pencil trees

Height without the floor space

A standard 6ft tree is about 1.2m across and needs a square metre and a half of floor once it is decorated. The trees in this group are half that width or less, so they fit beside a sofa, in the turn of a staircase, in a bay window or in a one-bedroom flat without blocking a door. Because they keep their height, they still read as a proper tree from across the room and from the street.

Pencil or slim

The 6.5ft Flocked Spruce Pencil Pine at £54.99 and the 6.6ft Silver Tinsel Pencil Pine at £29.99 are the narrowest, around 50cm across, and are the ones to pick for a hallway. The 7.5ft Kingswood Fir (£129 unlit, £169 with 350 LEDs fitted) is slim rather than pencil: about 80cm wide, which leaves room for larger baubles while still fitting a corner that a full tree would not.

Decorating a narrow tree

Fewer, smaller decorations look better on a slim tree. Six to eight baubles per foot, in two sizes at most, with a single ribbon spiralled from top to bottom, is enough. Lights should be wrapped in a tighter spiral than on a full tree so the gaps between branches do not show; 400 to 500 LEDs covers a 6ft pencil tree.

Colours and finishes

Six are green, two grey, one silver tipped and one frosted green. The grey and silver trees suit a modern room with white or black decorations; the flocked pencil spruce gives the snowy look in a size that fits a flat.