Crestwood Spruce Garland Review: How It Looks on a Banister

The staircase is the first thing anybody sees when they walk into this house. The front door opens into the hall, the banister is right there going up to the left, and for most of the twenty four Christmases I have decorated this place it wore a plain garland with a string of lights I had wound through it by hand. Every December I stood at the bottom step and pulled at that wire, trying to even it out. It never evened out. The lights bunched at the post and went thin at the top, and by the time I finished my fingers ached. Two Christmases ago I bought a National Tree Company Crestwood Spruce garland, nine feet, pre-lit, and I have not wound a light string through anything since.

Nine feet sounds like a lot until you put a tape measure on a banister. Mine runs from the bottom post to the turn at the top, and that is the whole of it, no slack, no extra to drape over a hook. What that means in practice is that one garland does the job and a second one would be wasted, which is worth knowing before you order. It is battery powered, three AA batteries, fifty lights, and that is the reason the staircase is decorated at all, because there is no outlet anywhere near that rail.

How I've Used It

I bought this garland two Christmases ago, after one too many Novembers spent wrestling a light string. It goes up the weekend after Thanksgiving, the same weekend Gary carries the tree up from the basement, and it comes down the first weekend of January with everything else. It has only ever hung on the banister. The mantel in the living room belongs to a set of flameless candles and I have never been tempted to move the garland there, because the stairs are what people see when they come through the door.

I hang it myself, start to finish. Gary brings the box up the basement stairs and that is the extent of his help, so the garland is on me from the bottom post to the top. I use soft fabric strips, tied in a plain knot at each post and one more where the rail starts to curve, and there is nothing nailed, taped or stapled into the wood. The whole thing takes about ten minutes, and half of that is me backing down the stairs to look at it from the hall.

The battery box tucks behind the bottom post. That is the only spot that hides it from the front door, and I found it on the first try, which never happens. Three AA batteries go in when the garland comes up in November. I have never had to change them mid season, and I have never once had to think about where a cord is running, because there is no cord.

Taking it down is easier than putting it up. The first weekend of January I untie the strips, coil the garland loosely, and it goes back into the box it came in, which sits on a shelf in the unfinished basement next to the tree box and the ornament box. I do not stuff it. I learned that with the old one, which got mashed into a bin and came out the next year with bent tips that never went back. Loosely coiled, it comes out in November looking like it did when I put it away.

How It Looks Going Up the Stairs

From the front door it reads as one continuous sweep of spruce from the bottom post to the turn. That is the thing I could never get with the old garland, which went fat where the lights bunched and thin in between. This one has over one hundred branch tips packed close enough that I cannot see the rail through it in the middle of the run, and where the handrail curves at the top the tips fan out instead of creasing into a lump.

In daylight it looks like greenery on a rail, which is all I want from it. At night, with the porch light off and the candles going in the living room, the fifty lights are soft and even, roughly one every two inches, and the effect from the bottom step is a low glow rather than a string of bright dots. I have had two people ask whether it plugs in, and both of them were surprised by the answer.

The listing calls the shape a runner, and that is the right thing to expect. It is built to travel along a rail or a shelf, not to be bunched into a wreath or stuffed into a doorway. On a banister that is exactly what you want. There is no wire armature fighting you, so it lies where you put it and stays put, and I have never come down in the morning to find it slumped to one side.

From the landing at the top, looking down, it does something I did not expect. The garland sits on the outside of the rail, so from above you see the length of it against the stairwell wall and the lights make a line down the stairs. Gary noticed that before I did. He came down one morning, stopped halfway, and said it looked like a hotel. From him, that is high praise.

Fifty Lights and a Battery Box

Fifty lights on a nine foot run is enough that there is no dark stretch anywhere on my banister. The old arrangement, with the string wound by hand, always had a gap somewhere, usually right at eye level where I could not fix it without untying the whole thing. I have not had that problem once in two seasons.

The lights themselves are small and warm, and they do not flicker or buzz. I switch the garland on when the porch light comes on and switch it off before I go up to bed, and that small ritual is one of my favorite parts of December. What I do not do is hunt for an outlet or step over a cord at the bottom of the stairs, and if you have ever had a cord running across a dark hallway you know why that matters.

The batteries are the trade off and I want to be straight about it. Three AA batteries are not free and they are not invisible. I buy them in the fall with the other Christmas odds and ends, I put them in when the garland goes up, and I take them out when it comes down in January. That is the whole maintenance routine, and it is the one chore this garland adds to my December. If you would rather plug something in and forget it, this is the wrong garland for your staircase, and I would rather tell you that now than have you find out in the dark.

The Glitter, the Fullness, and the Mess

The tips carry silver glitter, and the glitter sheds a little when the garland first comes out of storage. The first November I found flecks on the stair treads for a few days. It is not a flaw so much as what a glittered tip does after eleven months folded in a box, and it stops. I keep a lint roller in the hall closet for the tree skirt anyway, so it was not an extra errand, but I would not hang this over a dark carpet and expect nothing to fall.

Fullness is where it earns its place. I shake it out at the bottom of the stairs, carry it up, and it fills in as I tie, which is not true of the tree. The tree takes me forty minutes of fluffing and I do that myself. The garland takes none. My old one had bald patches where the light string pulled the branches together, and I used to tuck in sprigs from the craft store to cover them. I have not done that once with this one.

The silver glitter is the one part of this garland that is dressier than what I would have picked for myself. In daylight it is subtle. At night, with the candles lit across the hall, the tips catch the light in a way the plain garland never did, and the banister looks warmer from the front door than it has any right to. I am not a glitter person. I have a plain tree and plain stockings. This is the one sparkly thing in the house and it earns its place.

The one piece of advice I would give is to shake it out on the porch before you bring it inside in November. It saves you sweeping the stairs twice and it gets the loose glitter off before it lands anywhere you would notice. That is a small thing, but small things are what separate a decoration you keep for ten years from one you resent by the second December.

Two Seasons Later

This coming Christmas will be its third. Nothing has failed. Every one of the fifty lights comes on, no section has gone dark, and the branch tips still hold their shape when I pull the garland out of the box. I have thrown out garlands that looked fine in the store and were bald by the second December, so I do not take this for granted. The National Tree Company garland has needed no repair, no re-stringing, and no coaxing.

It is light, 2.8 pounds according to the listing, which means I can carry it up the stairs on one arm with the fabric strips in the other hand. It also means it does not drag the ties loose over six weeks of hanging. The battery box door still closes the way it did the first November, and nothing has cracked or come apart.

I have bought cheap garlands before and I know how that goes. They shed, the lights go dark in one section, and by the third year you are stuffing it into a bag and telling yourself you will deal with it next December. What I notice with this one is that I have stopped thinking about it. It goes up, it lights, it comes down, and it does not ask anything of me in between. That is the whole test as far as I am concerned.

What I would change is small. The battery box is the fussiest part of the whole thing, and I wish it were slimmer so it sat flatter behind the post. The listing also shows no manufacturer warranty, which I noticed after I ordered and have not needed. Two seasons in, that is the honest sum of my complaints, and neither one has made me think about replacing it.

Nine feet covered my banister post to post. I tie it up alone in about ten minutes, and I have not wound a light string through anything since.

Who This Is For

This is for the person with a staircase and no outlet near it. That was my problem and it is the reason I bought this garland instead of a plug in strand. It suits a banister roughly the length of mine, a rail you would rather not put nails into, and a hallway where the stairs are the first thing a guest sees. It also suits anyone who has spent an afternoon untangling a light string and would like that afternoon back.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your staircase runs longer than nine feet and you want one unbroken line, because you will be buying two and the join will show. Skip it if you want greenery for an outdoor railing, since mine has only ever hung indoors and I cannot tell you how it handles weather. And skip it if you would rather plug a strand into the wall and forget it. This one runs on three AA batteries and I switch it on myself, which I like, but it is not everyone's answer.