Last December I stood in our hallway in Munich, staring at the bare patch where our Christmas tree used to go, and realized our old fake tree had finally lost too many branches to look respectable anymore. Rather than spending 80 euros on another plastic one that would shed glitter all over the parquet, I decided to try building my own. One experiment turned into three weekends of sawing, gluing, and borrowing books from shelves all over the flat. Some of these worked beautifully, one fell over at 2am and scared the cat, and all of them taught me something useful.
1. Classic Green Branch DIY Tree
This was my starting point because it is the closest thing to a real tree, and I wanted to see whether I could beat the store-bought look with actual greenery. I collected fallen pine and fir branches from the Englischer Garten after a windy weekend in late November — free, and honestly fresher than anything sold wrapped in plastic. Back home, I wired them in layers around an old broom handle stuck into a heavy flower pot filled with gravel, longest branches at the bottom, shorter ones spiraling up. I learned the hard way that fresh greenery needs a misting every two or three days or the lower branches brown out by Christmas. Faux branches from the craft shop cost me about 12 euros for a bundle and looked nearly as good, plus they are reusable next year. Either way, wrapping one 20-light warm-white fairy light string and hanging pinecones on thin wire finished it. Total time was about two hours, and it sat on our balcony in a pot of sand without shedding a single needle indoors.
2. Wooden Pallet Christmas Tree
A neighbour was throwing out an old pallet in October, and I dragged it home before the bulk waste truck arrived — best kind of DIY material is free material. I pried the planks apart with a crowbar, cut them into decreasing lengths from about 90 cm down to 20 cm, and sanded each one because pallet wood splinters are genuinely nasty. I mounted them horizontally on a central vertical board with wood glue and a few screws, leaving small gaps so the tree silhouette reads clearly. A coat of whitewash over everything cost almost nothing and gave it that farmhouse look without hiding the wood grain. It leans against the wall in our hallway now, strung with 30 warm fairy lights and a few wooden ornaments, and I love that I can flat-store it in the cellar in January by just hanging it on a hook. One caution: measure your wall space first, because mine ended up 160 cm tall and nearly blocked the coat hooks.
3. Minimalist Wire or Metal Tree
This one came from a trip to a homeware shop where I saw a thin metal tree priced at 45 euros and thought, that is just wire on a stick. I bought a 5-euro roll of galvanized wire from the hardware store and bent a loose spiral cone shape, roughly 60 cm tall, using a large bottle as a form so the loops stayed even. The spiral sits on a small wooden disc base with a hole drilled in the middle, and I wrapped one battery-powered fairy light string around it. What I did not expect was how pretty the shadows look on the wall when the lights are on — it projects this lovely spiral pattern across the room. It lives on my desk now during December. The only real mistake was making my first attempt too wobbly, so the second version got a thicker base disc and a dab of hot glue where the wire meets the wood. Lightweight, modern, and it packs down to almost nothing.
4. Book Stack Christmas Tree
I made this in about twenty minutes on a Sunday when a friend was coming over and my living room corner looked bare. I pulled hardcovers off the shelf — biggest at the bottom, smallest at the top — and fanned each one slightly open so the pages formed the tree’s body. A string of tiny lights woven between the layers does most of the decorating work, and a paper star from an old advent calendar went on top. My tip is to use books you have already read and do not mind dusting, and to put a cloth under the bottom one so the shelf does not scratch. The whole thing stayed up through New Year without a single wobble, which surprised me, though I would not trust it anywhere a toddler could reach. It cost me exactly zero euros and got more compliments than anything else I made that season.
5. Felt or Fabric Christmas Tree
I made a felt tree for the nursery corner because my niece visits over the holidays and everything in her reach needs to be soft. I cut a big triangle from dark green felt, about 80 cm tall, and hung it on the wall with removable adhesive strips. Then I cut little ornaments — stars, circles, tiny stockings — from red, gold, and white felt and stuck a small velcro dot on the back of each. The magic is that she can rearrange the decorations herself every single day, and nothing breaks. It took me one evening with scissors and a glue gun, and the materials cost under 10 euros at the craft store. Hot glue the velcro dots to the felt ornaments, by the way, because the sticky backing alone peels off by Christmas Eve. When the season ends it rolls up in a drawer, and I genuinely think it is the friendliest tree on this list.
6. Hanging Wall Christmas Tree
Our old flat had a living room so narrow that a standing tree meant squeezing past it to reach the sofa, so the wall version was born out of pure necessity. I pinned a length of jute twine to the wall in a zigzag, getting wider toward the bottom, which took some patience and a level to look right. Small wooden pegs clipped pinecones, paper stars, and a few lightweight baubles along each strand, and I wove a 40-light fairy string through the whole thing. It reads as a tree from across the room, takes zero floor space, and the whole thing comes down in January leaving only a few tiny nail holes. The trickiest part was keeping the rows evenly spaced — I ended up marking the wall lightly in pencil first, which wiped off easily. Renters, this one is your friend.
7. Branch Christmas Tree in a Vase
Sometimes the simplest thing on the list is the one people photograph most. I found a beautifully forked bare branch on a walk, sprayed it white from a 6-euro can of matte spray paint, and stood it in a tall ceramic vase weighted with pebbles. A short string of warm fairy lights wound around the twigs, a handful of tiny gold baubles hung on thread, and that was it — done in half an hour. It sat on our kitchen sideboard all December and looked sculptural even in daylight. If you use a fresh-cut branch instead of a found dry one, let it dry indoors for a few days first or it can drip sap onto your furniture, which I learned the mildly sticky way. This is also my go-to for the hallway console, where a big tree would never fit.
8. Chalkboard Christmas Tree
We have a chalkboard wall in the kitchen — the kind that was very trendy a few years ago — and one December evening I drew a tall triangle tree on it with white chalk markers, just to see. I added drawn garlands, a star, and wrote the gift list along the side, and it became the house advent calendar of sorts: each day someone added a little drawing or a note. Chalk markers wipe off with a damp cloth, which matters, because regular chalk dust gets everywhere. I also stuck a few magnetic wooden ornaments on it since the board is steel underneath the paint. It costs nothing, takes up no space at all, and the kids in the family fight over who gets to decorate it. The drawing takes maybe thirty minutes if you sketch lightly in pencil first, which I strongly recommend unless your freehand tree looks like mine did the first time — more pyramid than pine.
9. Mason Jar or Bottle DIY Tree
I save interesting glass bottles all year — the green ones from mineral water, amber apothecary bottles from the flea market — and at Christmas they get their moment. I arrange five or six bottles on a wooden tray in a loose triangle, tallest in the middle, and drop a short string of fairy lights with a tiny battery pack behind them so the glass glows. A sprig of fir in each bottle neck sells the Christmas part without any fuss. The whole arrangement takes ten minutes and looks genuinely lovely on the dining table at dinner. Just keep the battery pack hidden behind the tallest bottle and use flameless tea lights inside any wide-mouthed jar instead of real candles, because dried fir sprigs near open flame is a bad idea. Everything gets washed and reused in January.
10. Upcycled Book or Magazine Christmas Tree
For this one I sacrificed a water-damaged paperback nobody would ever read again and turned it into a folded-page tree. You fold every page corner into the center — top corner down to the spine, then the bottom corner up — which takes about an hour for a 300-page book, so put on a podcast. The result is a surprisingly sculptural little tree that stands on its own covers. I dabbed the page edges with gold watercolor for a gilded look, and it sat on my office shelf all season. A thicker hardcover gives a fuller tree, and honestly the older and more yellowed the pages, the better it looks. My mistake the first time was using a glossy magazine, which would not hold its folds — stick to matte paper. Zero cost, very satisfying, and it kept one book out of the recycling bin.
Conclusion
Of the ten, the pallet tree and the book stack are the ones still standing in our flat every December, and the wall tree is what I make for friends with tiny apartments. If you try just one, start with whichever matches the space you actually have rather than the one that photographs best. A tree that fits your home beats a pretty tree that blocks the hallway every time.