Experts say they've cracked how to decorate the "perfect" Christmas tree - and it's all down to science.
If you're thinking about putting the tree up soon, or even if you already have, it's likely you'll want it to look as good as possible. Christmas is the perfect time for getting together with family and friends, and having a perfectly festive tree will impress any guests you have round.
Thankfully, students at Sheffield University Maths Society have come up with some clever formulas for the ideal tree 0 right down to tinsel and baubles.
They came up with a handy algorithm you should follow when decorating your tree, in order for it to look its best, reports the Mirror.
The students calculated that a 152cm (5ft) Christmas tree would require 31 baubles, 776cm of tinsel and 478cm of lights with a 15cm star or angel on the top.
Length of tinsel = 13 x Pi/8 x (tree height in cm)
Number of baubles = √17/20 x (tree height in cm)
Height of star in cm = Tree height in cm ÷ 10.
They've even developed a special calculator if you don't want to do the maths yourselves, which will work out everything for you.
According to the calculator, if you have a standard sized 6ft Christmas tree, you'll need approximately 38 baubles, 929cm of tinsel and 572cm of lights.
To top it all off, your star should be 18cm in height to finish off the perfect ratio of tinsel, baubles and lights.
The sum is all down to trigonometry, or as they like to call it 'treegonometry'.
And when it comes to the colour of your baubles, it's more of a personal preference - but learning about the 'four-colour conjecture' could help.
This idea was considered back in 1852 by Francis Guthrie, a South African mathematician.
He noticed that he needed just four colours for a map of the counties of England, and was eventually proved in 1976 by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken.
Luckily for us, the Christmas tree theory is much simpler than one to do with maps.
As reported by Irish Times, if we have four baubles of different colours, there is a specific way they should be arranged so none of the same colours touch each other - something all perfectionist tree decorators can appreciate.
And if they're all the same size too, arranging them in a regular pattern will look great - similar to the squares of a chessboard.
So, if you want to decorate your Christmas tree using maths or decide to just go with the flow, it would seem that certain measurements and amount of colour really do matter.
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