Value for money: Christmas decorations

This week, Value for Money compares Christmas decorations on offer from four major retailers

Dunnes Stores

€20.50

We gave ourselves a budget of around €20 for decorations and visited four shops to see what we could get. In Dunnes, we got 100 baubles in red and gold, some bronze tinsel and eight gold bows. All the baubles have the string attached, which is just as well, as it would have broken our hearts to thread the string on to all these fiddly decorations. These are great value. Granted they are not family heirlooms but if you have a naked tree that needs dressing you’ll not go far wrong. They are probably not on the right side of tasteful but there is a pleasing mix of textures with some glittered, some ridged and some smooth with a matt finish and others pleasingly shiny.

Verdict: Good value

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Brown Thomas

€22

Okay, so if you have more money than sense – a lot more money than sense – you may want to decorate your tree at BTs. It has to be said that the decorations they have are lovely. A lot of the glitter on the mini Christmas tree ended up on our fingers. We loved the “Elf Boot” ornament – it’s basically an elf’s feet and his hat and it jingles. It is €8, which is silly, but we don’t care. The Noel snowman is also very chic. If you wanted to bedeck your tree in BT decorations, you’d need to spend the guts of €300, which is hilarious – although there are probably people who think nothing of it. “This is a decorative article not a toy or intended for use by a child under 14” warns one of the decorations – well, ho ho ho to you too.

Verdict: Not at this price

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Marks & Spencer

€21

Well, well, well aren’t these fierce tasteful altogether! They are clearly a better quality decoration than the cheap and cheerful options we tried first. We loved the silver bird which cost €7 and was made with hand-blown glass. The box contains 48 baubles and two garlands. The baubles are all shapes and sizes. The diamond-shaped decorations are particularly nice while the glass ones are, we are assured, shatter-proof. There isn’t a whole lot in the box and we’d need to spend over €60 to make our tree look sufficiently festive. While they are tasteful, we’re not sure tastefulness has any place on a Christmas tree and we’re more fans of gaudiness.

Verdict: If you want classy

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Penneys

€22

For our €22 investment we got four metres of tinsel, three absolutely enormous gold baubles that come in glittery, matt and shiny finishes, 100 assorted decorations, which are of many different shapes, and another 24 little balls which are great when it comes to accentuating the enormousness of the giant baubles.

Penneys has the widest selection of decorations – it has trees, lights and garlands too – and is definitely the place to go if you want to make your tree look trashily festive for half nothing.

Verdict: Unbelievably cheap

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Is there something you would like us to test? E-mail suggestions to pricewatch@irishtimes.com