This Tiktok Christmas Tree Hack Is Going Viral – I Tried It Out And Here's What Happened

Turn your Christmas tree into a GLOWING TOWER OF WONDER.

While scrolling on TikTok, this Christmas tree light hack popped up that showed how to get an extra bright effect:

@kellyfitzsimons__

Get those lights right up the trunk and watch your tree glow 🎄 I used 3 x 2000 cluster lights #christmas #christmastree #christmashack #lifehack

♬ original sound - Kelly Fitzsimons

My Christmas tree decorating skills are average at best, so this spoke to me. If I can't wow my guests with my taste in ornaments I'll just BLIND THEM.

People in the comments were deeply impressed by the effect in the video but a bit worried about not having the patience for it. But luckily I, a person with no patience, am here to test it out for you!

Last year we didn't even have a tree because I couldn't be bothered to get one. That's the level I'm at.

Here is my bare, slightly wonky tree that I got from a market near our house. He's a chonky boy, especially at the base, and I love him.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

My partner suggested we do a bit of 'pruning' and I slapped those scissors out his hand so damn fast.

For the hack, you need at least two sets of lights. In the original video, the TikToker (Kelly Fitzsimons) has THREE sets of lights that each have TWO THOUSAND lights. My sets are from Argos and have 400 lights.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

So this is a very good test of 'is this a good hack or is it just very nice lights'.

Step one: untangle your lights. AKA, my first hurdle.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

Kelly says her lights don't tangle. Mine tangled as soon as they left the box. 

It took me a solid fifteen minutes to untangle my lights, which is fifteen minutes longer than I would usually be prepared to spend untangling anything.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

I had to put them in one big line on the floor because they tangled if they so much as touched each other. If anyone has recommendations for tangle-free lights, lmk.

Step two: put one set of lights around the trunk of the tree.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

The trick is to not wrap the lights around the trunk in a spiral but instead run them back and forth in front of the trunk. This is meant to make them easier to take off, which I can confirm is true – I messed up on my first go (misjudged light distribution and ran out midway) and pulling them off to start again was a doddle.

You do have to really get *up close and personal* with the tree to push the lights towards the trunk, which got quite annoying. There's only so many pine needles in the face I can tolerate.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

Because my tree was particularly bushy at the bottom, it also meant I had to do a lot of pulling the branches apart to make space for the lights to go through.

This was definitely the most time-consuming and faff-y part of this hack.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

One recommendation I have if you're doing this is to be stingy with the lights when you start, because if you reach the top and still have a lot of cable left, it's easy to run that down the trunk to give a bit extra to the base. But if you run out halfway, you have to start over.

Once the column of lights were in, I started to get really excited because it was looking good. I was hot and mussed up and had pine needles in my hair, but the promise of a dazzlingly lit tree had gripped me.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

My head was saying 'you've done enough, have a nap in front of the TV now' but my heart was saying 'NO REST ONLY LIGHTS'.

Step three: take your second string of lights and put it on top of the branches in a zigzag formation.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

You can use two strings of lights here (one for the bottom, one for the top) like Kelly, but her tree looks very big – one pack did me just fine. This was definitely way easier than the first step and took me nowhere near as long. I also didn't have to invade the tree's personal space as much, which we were both thankful for.

In the original video, Kelly does zigzags on each individual branch but I very quickly switched to an extremely loose interpretation of this. Even though I am now a goblin for Christmas lights, I'm still lazy.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

Minimum effort for maximum output. 

Here's the finished result! I won't lie, I love it so much.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

Midway through putting the first thing of lights up the tree trunk I was berating myself for getting myself into this, but I'm really pleased I went to the extra bother. 

Here it is with decorations. I think it looks like a GALAXY tree.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

The photos genuinely don't do it justice, it's so twinkly in real life. It's like my tree is full of multicoloured fireflies or stars! 

You can also get some really cool effects by playing with the settings, as you can put different colours and speeds on each string of lights.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

I call this combo, 'there's a party going on in that tree that I want an invite to'.

I also think it makes up a lot for my partner and I's very motley collection of baubles we've amassed from various gift shops. And that we don't have a star or fairy on top of the tree.

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

No one can tell you've mismatched decorations when there's hundreds of lights shining in their eyes.

Final thoughts:

Emma Cooke / BuzzFeed

Would I do this again? Yes! In all seriousness, I think this is going to be my go-to light technique from now on. I was pretty sceptical starting out as I was worried my cheap lights would look a bit sad compared to Kelly's beautiful golden ones, but I think it's helped make them look a lot more expensive.

Would I recommend this to impatient people? Also yes. This genuinely wasn't that much more time or effort than putting Christmas tree lights on my usual way (a big random wrap around situation) and it means you can be a lot lazier about baubles, or even skip them altogether. The technique also means the lights will pull right off super quickly when it comes to taking your tree down.