Faux Garland That Doesn't Look Faux: What I'd Buy Again
The best faux Christmas garland has mixed needle types, at least two or three shades of green, and a wire spine you can't see once it's fluffed. Buy one plain evergreen base you love, then add real-touch cedar stems, eucalyptus and berry picks to break up the repetition.
I hung a faux garland on my mantel a few years ago, stepped back, took a picture for Instagram, and immediately deleted it. In person it was fine! In the photo it looked like a pool noodle wearing a costume. And I could not figure out why until I zoomed in!
It was the needles. Every single one was the exact same length, the exact same width, pointing the exact same direction, in the exact same shade of green. Real greenery is a mess — cedar flops, pine sticks out, some tips are almost blue and some are almost yellow. Mine had none of that. It had one green, one needle, and a shiny wire spine you could see right through the middle of. One green!
So I got a little obsessed (shocking, I know) and started buying garland with an actual checklist. It took me three seasons and honestly more money than I want to admit to figure out what separates the faux garland that fools people from the faux garland that doesn’t. Here’s the short version, and then here’s exactly what I bought!
The three tells
Uniform needles. If the product photo shows tips that are all identical, it will read as plastic in person and about ten times worse in photos. (Zoom in on the listing photo before you order. Every single time.) You want mixed needle lengths, or at minimum a base you can break up with something else.
Visible wire. Pick up the garland and look at it from the side. If you can see a green or silver wire running through it, so can everyone in your living room! Good garland has enough tips per foot to bury its own spine.
One shade of green. This is the big one. Real evergreen is at least three greens. If your garland is one flat color from end to end, no amount of ribbon is going to save it. I have tried. Several times!
Okay! Here’s what I’ve actually bought and lived with.
1. National Tree Company 9 ft Crestwood Spruce pre-lit garland
This is the one I’d buy again first. It’s a spruce base with pinecones, red berries and a little glitter worked in, plus 50 warm white LEDs on a timer, and all of that mixed texture is doing exactly what I said above — it breaks up the repetition for you before you even open the box. I paid somewhere in the $40s for mine (garland pricing bounces around all season, so check before you commit).
What’s wrong with it: 180 tips is on the thin side for 9 feet, so it needs real fluffing to hide the wire, and the glitter sheds. Not a little! Lay a towel down when you unbox it, and maybe do the unboxing in the garage.
2. National Tree Company 9 ft Winchester Pine, unlit
This is my workhorse base. It’s plain, it’s unlit, it’s 200 tips of ordinary pine, and I mean that as a compliment! When I want to build a mantel exactly how I want it, I start with a boring green base and add my own everything. It’s usually one of the cheaper 9 ft options out there, which is the whole point — you’re going to spend the savings on picks.
What’s wrong with it: on its own it is very much one shade of green. Bought bare and hung bare, this is the garland that would have gotten deleted off my Instagram. It only works as a starting point!
3. National Tree Company 9 ft Norwood Fir, pre-lit and battery operated
240 tips, 50 warm white LEDs, battery operated with a built-in timer. The battery part is the reason I own it. I have one doorway with no outlet anywhere near it, and I spent an entire December of my life running an extension cord across a walkway before I gave up and bought this. An entire December!
What’s wrong with it: batteries. You are going to be changing them, and the battery box has to live somewhere. I tuck mine up behind the garland at the top corner where nobody looks, but if you’re hanging this at eye level you’ll see it, so decide where it goes before you hang anything!
4. National Tree Company 9 ft North Valley Spruce, pre-lit
Spruce needles are shorter and stubbier than fir, so if you’re doing two runs of garland in one room (say, a mantel and a stair rail), buying two different species is a sneaky way to make both look more real. This one has 10 light functions, which sounds gimmicky, and it is, except that “steady on” is one of them and that’s the only one I have ever touched!
What’s wrong with it: 200 tips over 9 feet again, and the wire is more visible on this one than on the Norwood. Fluff it hard!
5. MEUIS real touch cedar stems, 20 inch, 12 pack
If you buy one thing off this whole list, buy stems! Real-touch cedar has that soft, slightly rubbery feel and a drapey, flat shape that no molded pine tip has, and tucking eight or ten of these into a plain garland does more than spending twice as much on the garland itself. I run them in at an angle so they hang down instead of sticking out.
What’s wrong with it: “real touch” is a spectrum and these are middle of it, not the very top. And 12 stems sounds like a lot until you’re halfway down a 9 ft garland and realize it very much isn’t!
6. Tiyard eucalyptus stems, 18 piece
Here’s my favorite trick, and I only stumbled into it because I ran out of cedar halfway through a mantel: add a green that isn’t evergreen at all. Eucalyptus is round, silvery, and completely the wrong shape for Christmas greenery, and that’s exactly why it works. Your eye stops reading “repeating plastic pattern” the second there’s a leaf in there!
What’s wrong with it: these are silk-style, not real touch, so keep them tucked in rather than out front where the light catches them. Also the stems arrive bent from the box. Bend them back — they’re wired, you cannot hurt them!
7. Sggvecsy red berry and pinecone picks, 5 pack
The last 10% is filler picks. Pinecones add the shadow and depth that flat garland is missing, and red berries give your eye somewhere to land. Five picks is enough for one mantel and nowhere near enough for a staircase, so count your feet before you order!
What’s wrong with it: the berries are shiny in direct light, so I keep these away from lamps and off the front edge.
One I’d have liked to include: Vickerman makes a Mixed Country Pine garland with grapevine and real pinecones worked into it, which is a genuinely mixed-needle base rather than one you have to fix yourself. I couldn’t get a current listing to load while I was writing this, so I’m not linking it — but if you see it in a store, pick it up and look at it from the side. That’s the construction you want.
If you build a garland this year, please post it and tag me @sugardesignco! I love seeing what y’all do with the plain green ones especially, because that’s where all the personality is.
-Ciera
Made something with this? Tag me @sugardesignco — I love seeing them.
Questions I get asked
- How do you make faux garland look real?
- Fluff every branch out in three directions so nothing sits flat, then tuck in a few real-touch cedar stems and one non-evergreen texture like eucalyptus. The mix is what sells it — a single uniform green never looks real, no matter how much it cost.
- What makes cheap faux garland look cheap?
- Three things give it away: needles that are all the exact same length and shape, a shiny green wire spine you can see through the branches, and one flat shade of green from end to end.
- How many feet of garland do I need for a mantel?
- I buy at least one and a half times the length of my mantel. A 6 ft mantel wants 9 ft of garland minimum, and more than that if you want it to swag down at the ends instead of lying there like a stick.
- Is pre-lit garland worth it?
- Pre-lit is worth it anywhere you'd have to hide a light strand yourself, like a stair rail. For a mantel I'd rather buy unlit and add my own lights, because when a pre-lit section fails you've lost the whole garland.
