Most trees are decorated in one evening and then quietly deteriorate for six weeks. A little planning at the start buys you a tree that still looks deliberate on the day you take it down.

Hang the Heavy Things First

Ceramic, glass and anything with a weighted base goes on before the lights and before the light ornaments. Heavy pieces need branches close to the trunk, and once the tree is dressed you cannot see where those branches are. Working outward from the trunk also stops the classic failure where every solid ornament ends up on the tips and the tree slowly droops into a cone of drooping ends.

Three Depths, Not One Surface

• Deep: matte baubles pushed right in near the trunk, doing nothing but filling the dark.
• Middle: the pieces with detail worth reading - carved wood, appliqued felt, anything hand-painted.
• Tips: light, reflective, and only the light and reflective. Glass drops, mirrored blades, gilt threads.

A tree decorated on one plane reads as a wall. Three depths is what makes it read as a tree, and it costs nothing but the order you hang things in.

Leave Two Branches Empty

Something will break, and something will arrive late. Two empty branches at eye height on the side that faces the room is the difference between absorbing that gracefully and re-hanging half the tree in the third week of December.

Every gingerbread house fails in the same place, at the same moment: the second wall goes up, the first one leans, and the roof never gets a chance. The fix is structural, not decorative.

Royal Icing Is Mortar, Not Glue

Icing thin enough to pipe prettily is far too thin to hold a wall. Build with a stiff batch - it should hold a peak that does not fold over - and keep a second, looser batch for the decorating afterwards. Two consistencies, two bags, and nothing about the build fights the piping.

Twenty Minutes Between Walls

• Set the two long walls first, braced upright against tins or mugs.
• Wait twenty minutes. Do something else. This is the whole trick.
• Add the gable ends into the corners, brace again, wait again.
• Only then the roof, one slope at a time, held for a slow count of sixty.

Sand the Edges

Baked gingerbread swells slightly and rarely comes out of the oven perfectly square. A few passes with a fine grater along each mating edge takes thirty seconds and turns a wobbly corner into a flat joint. Kits with jig-cut panels skip this step, which is most of what you are paying for.

A stocking is the only part of Christmas where the budget is small and the hit rate is expected to be high. That is a harder brief than the main present, and it rewards a rule or two.

One of Each, Not Six of One

The stockings that land are the ones with variety of kind rather than variety of colour: something to eat, something to wear, something to keep, something to use up. Six small ornaments is a stocking that gets emptied politely. Four different categories is a stocking that gets talked about.

The Keepable One Should Be Datable

The item that survives to next December is almost always the one that can be attached to a year - a knitted miniature, a carved ornament, anything that goes back on the tree. Twelve of those and you have a tree that is a family record rather than a colour scheme.

Fill Order Matters

• Heaviest and least interesting at the toe, where nobody looks first.
• The keepable one two-thirds down, so it arrives after the sweets and before the boredom.
• Something visible at the cuff. A stocking that looks full from the doorway is doing half its job before it is touched.

The most common fault in a Christmas table is height. Candles, centrepieces and tiered stands all creep upward until the people opposite each other are having two separate lunches.

Thirty Centimetres Is the Ceiling

Sit down at your own table before you dress it and put your hand at eye level. Nothing between two seated people should break that line. Candle rings are popular for exactly this reason - the light is at the table rather than above it, and a low ring of cones and berries fills the middle without building a wall.

Warm Metals or Cool Ones, Not Both

Gold and brass sit together. Silver and pewter sit together. Mixed, they read as an accident rather than a decision, and the fastest way to make a modest table look considered is to pick one temperature and hold it across chargers, cutlery and candle holders.

Give Everyone Something to Take Home

• A mini stocking at each place, name written on the cuff.
• Or one ornament per setting, hung on the back of the chair.
• Either doubles as the place card, which removes a job.

Festive knitwear has a reputation for being worn twice and then retired, and most of the time that is the knit's fault rather than the wearer's. There are three things to check before you buy.

Knitted In, Not Printed On

Turn the piece inside out. A reindeer band worked into the round leaves floats of the second colour across the back; a printed one leaves a rubbery patch. The knitted version survives a wash, keeps its stretch and does not crack at the fold line after a season in a box.

The Pom-Pom Test

Hold the hat and tug the pom-pom firmly. If it moves independently of the crown it has been stitched to the outer fabric only, and it will come away. A pom-pom sewn through the lining moves the whole hat with it.

Look for a Lined Brim

• Wool against the forehead is the single most common reason a hat is never worn twice.
• A fleece-lined band costs very little and changes the hat completely.
• Deep enough to fold once is the right depth - it covers the ears without riding up.

A small room does not need less decoration. It needs decoration that is not competing with the furniture for floor space, which is a different problem and an easier one to solve.

Go Up, and Go to the Thresholds

Doorways, the tops of bookcases and the wall above a radiator are all surfaces nobody is using in December. A tall standing figure beside a door reads as generous where the same figure in the middle of a room reads as an obstacle, and anything at the top of a shelf is seen from every seat.

One Big Thing Beats Nine Small Ones

Small rooms punish clutter and reward commitment. A single seventy-centimetre gnome by the front door, or one properly dressed tabletop fir, does more than nine scattered ornaments - and it leaves the surfaces you actually use still usable.

Borrow the Window

• A tabletop tree in the window decorates the room and the street at once.
• Glass and mirrored ornaments do most of their work on borrowed light.
• Nothing on the sill you have to move to open it, or it will be moved and not put back.