Buying Holiday Decorations and Ornaments by Mail Order: Storage and Sizing
Holiday decor is one of the few mail-order categories bought once and used for years, which makes sizing and storage mistakes far more costly than an ordinary return.
Most mail-order purchases get returned within weeks if something's wrong. Holiday decorations are different — a tree ordered a size too tall or ornaments bought without a real storage plan often don't reveal the problem until the box comes back out the following year, well past any return window and well past the point of fixing it cheaply. Getting the sizing and material choices right at the point of ordering matters more here than in most categories on this site.
Sizing a pre-lit tree correctly
Listed tree height is measured to the top branch, not including the tree topper, which typically adds 6 to 12 inches depending on style — a 7.5-foot tree with a star topper can reach past 8 feet, which matters in a room with standard 8-foot ceilings. Measure the actual ceiling height in the room the tree will stand, not a general assumption about your home, since finished basements, sunrooms, and older homes often have different ceiling heights than the rest of the house. Tree width, usually listed separately as a base or "widest point" diameter, also needs checking against the actual floor space, particularly in a room shared with furniture that won't be moved for the season.
- Pre-lit light counts vary enormously between trees of the same height — a densely lit tree can carry two to three times the bulb count of a sparser one at the same price point, so compare light count per foot of height, not just total count, when comparing across listings.
- Flame-retardant certification should be listed explicitly for artificial trees; it's a basic safety standard for indoor-use artificial trees and its absence from a listing is worth asking about directly before ordering.
- Branch tip count is a rough proxy for how full a tree looks once lit and decorated, and is a more useful comparison point between two trees at the same height than the marketing photos alone.
Ornaments: fragility and how they'll actually be stored
Glass ornaments photograph beautifully in catalog listings but require padded, compartmentalized storage to survive being packed away for eleven months a year without damage — buying a full glass ornament set without also budgeting for a proper storage box is a common reason a beloved set doesn't make it to a third holiday season. Shatterproof ornaments in resin or plastic sacrifice some of the visual depth of glass but hold up far better to repeated handling by children or pets, and are worth considering for lower shelves or high-traffic parts of a tree regardless of the material used elsewhere.
Ordering well ahead of the season, rather than during the final weeks before a holiday, matters more for decor than almost any other mail-order category — see our guide on holiday mail-order timing for how shipping deadlines compress hardest in this exact window. If decorations are part of a broader gift-giving season, our guide on sending gifts by mail order covers timing and packaging concerns that overlap closely with fragile decor shipments. The Consumer Product Safety Commission publishes seasonal safety guidance covering artificial tree flammability and small-part choking hazards in decorations that's worth a look before buying decor intended for a home with young children.
Lighted outdoor decor and electrical ratings
Outdoor string lights, inflatables, and projection decorations need to be rated specifically for outdoor use, a distinction that matters beyond weatherproofing — indoor-rated string lights lack the sealed connectors and UV-stabilized wiring insulation that outdoor use requires, and running them outdoors even briefly can degrade the insulation in ways that create a shock or fire risk in future seasons even after they're brought back inside. Checking for a listed outdoor rating, not just assuming a string of lights sold during the holiday season is automatically suitable for exterior use, is worth the extra minute at checkout. Extension cords used outdoors carry the same indoor/outdoor distinction, and running an indoor-rated extension cord to power outdoor decor is a more common cause of holiday-season electrical issues than the decorations themselves.
Inflatable decorations and large lighted displays also draw more current than their compact size suggests, and running several on a single outdoor circuit can trip a breaker repeatedly during the exact week you're trying to enjoy them — spreading larger displays across separate circuits, confirmed ahead of time rather than discovered on the first cold night when the load peaks, avoids the most common early complaint with mail-ordered outdoor holiday displays.