A red and gold Christmas tree with subtle cream poinsettias, ribbon and vintage mercury glass accents. This is an elegant and traditional tree that is festive for the holiday season!
To decorate your own Christmas trees, you might find my tutorial for how to decorate a Christmas tree helpful, or if you are wanting the snowy variety, check out my inspiration for 25 of the best flocked Christmas trees. You might also need the ribbons linked here.
I decided to create a red and gold Christmas tree this year on our new green Christmas tree. I haven't had a non-flocked tree in over a decade, so this was a fun change! This post will take you step-by-step through my process.
Red and Gold Christmas Tree Decorations
For this Christmas tree, I used subtle mixture of gold, metallics and cream decorations with a pop of red. All ornaments that could be sourced online can be found in my Christmas sources page.
This color combination has a special place in my heart because my mother in law would decorate her Christmas tree with it every year. It will always make me think of her.
Gold Decorations
I used subtle mercury glass ornaments, some with gold tones, and also a gold mesh ribbon. More shiny gold Christmas ornaments would be beautiful as well!
I like to collect my ornaments and use them over and over throughout the years, I have found that most mercury glass acts as a neutral where it can pull the silver metallics or the gold, depending on the tree.
Red Decorations
For this tree, I added a pop of red through a wine red velvet ribbon and the contrast against all of the cream and subtle gold neutrals is stunning.
If I had red ornaments, I would have probably added them to this tree as well. Especially the darker wine red ones. I love the wine red against all of the cream colors and the green of the Christmas tree.
How to Decorate a classic Red and Gold Christmas Tree
- Follow these steps to set up and fluff the Christmas tree. This is arguably the most important step because it makes such a huge difference in the way the overall tree looks.
- Start by adding the floral picks and stems to the Christmas tree. I used glitter frosted berries and added them evenly throughout the entire tree. I added frosted twig branches at the top, facing upward,
- Add your biggest ornaments. I did this evenly around the entire tree as well.
- Add in poinsettias to fill in any holes throughout the tree.
- Add medium sized ornaments.
- Using this tutorial for How to Add Ribbon to a Christmas Tree, add cream and gold ribbons to the tree.
- Finish by adding in the smaller ornaments in an outer layer around the tree, clustering ornaments in bunches if possible.
- The very last step is to add in the pop of red through velvet ribbon. Cut lengths of ribbon and drape them on branches evenly throughout the tree.
Red Ribbon Accent
Once I finished decorating this huge Christmas tree with all of my cream ribbon, gold and silver ornaments, berries, mercury glass, and the stunning glitter frosted berries, I kept thinking it would be stunning to add a pop of color.
Red is my favorite Christmas color, so it was the one that I naturally thought to use.
I cut up spools of wine red velvet ribbon and draped each length over a single stem, evenly spaced throughout the tree.
Red and Gold Christmas Tree Tips
Here are some of my best tips for decorating a red and gold Christmas tree:
- If you are having a hard time seeing if your tree has any holes, take a picture of it and analyze the picture. Sometimes things are easier to see that way as opposed to in-person.
- Create an in-person mood board with your choice of red/gold/cream/mercury glass ornaments, red or cream ribbon, floral picks and anything else you hope to use on your tree. This helps to visualize what all of the decor elements will look like together on the tree.
- Red and Gold Christmas trees can actually look very different from each other depending on the amount of each color you choose to use. If you would prefer a mostly red tree with subtle gold accents, for instance, plan accordingly with your purchases. I chose to create a neutral cream and gold base with pops of red.
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