Understand different Christmas tree foliage and needle types

What will my Christmas tree foliage look like?

Many brands of artificial Christmas trees offer different types of foliage options in their trees that are made from either PVC or PE materials. While some trees use one type of foliage exclusively, others may use a mix of foliage types to achieve a particular look. Usually, you can find out what foliage is being used by reading the description of each tree.

For example, Balsam Hill® offers three types of foliage:

True Needle®
1. True Needle®: Exclusive to Balsam Hill®, ultrarealistic True Needle® evergreen foliage is created with injection-molded PE plastic and several different colors of pigment to mimic the structure, texture and color of natural evergreen needles. It is simply the best method for creating lifelike artificial evergreen foliage. A unique feature of True Needle® foliage is the color variations within the branches. For example, the branch might be a brown/green while the needles start off a dark green and slowly fade to a lighter green.
    
    
    
    

Pine needle
2. Pine needle: The PVC pine needles used by Balsam Hill® are extruded to mimic the size and texture of long, thin needles of a pine tree. These needles even have the texture of real pine needles: if you roll them between your thumb and finger, you will feel the ridges.
    
    
    
    
    
    

Classic needle
3. Classic needle: Classic needles are made from thin sheets of PVC that are cut into fine strands to resemble evergreen needles. Balsam Hill® uses these resilient, flexible needles as the primary foliage of many of its trees in the BH Classics collection and a few trees in the Signature Collections. It is also used as filler for most other Christmas trees because of its superior ability to block light and create a “full” look for the tree.
    
    

Regardless of the type of foliage or type of tree you prefer, when buying a tree online, we recommend that you look carefully at the photographs of the trees you are considering.  At Balsam Hill®, we always provide "super zoom" photos of the complete trees so you can look at the detail of our quality and craftsmanship.  If you are considering an artificial Christmas tree from another source, make sure you can view a high-resolution photograph of the tree to gauge quality.  Many Christmas trees look great at low resolution but do not look as good when you see them up-close and in-person.