Why Faux Trees Cost $80 or $900 - And What Changes In Between

A faux olive tree can cost you $80 or it can cost you $900, and both trees will have plastic leaves. That fact confuses more shoppers than anything else in this category, so this article walks the whole ladder and says plainly what changes at each rung and what does not.

Prices are as published on each retailer's own page at the time of writing. Canadian and US pricing differ, so check your local site. If you arrived here hunting a specific brand, we keep separate deep dives on Pottery Barn's olive tree, McGee & Co and RH versus West Elm. This page is the ladder those three hang off.

What does the price ladder actually look like?

Roughly like this, from the bottom up.

What genuinely changes as the price goes up?

Four things, and they are real.

The trunk. At the bottom of the ladder a trunk is moulded plastic over a wire core. Higher up it becomes plastic over a proper metal support, then fibreglass over steel, then in some cases an actual timber trunk with the canopy built onto it. This is the single biggest driver of how a tree reads when you stand next to it, and it is also structural: a 13 ft tree needs a steel core to stand without guy wires. Real wood costs more and reads better at close range, which is why it is worth paying for in a lobby and often not worth it in a hallway. It is also not automatically a four-figure feature: our 5.25 to 7 ft olive built on a natural wood trunk runs $249 to $419 CAD.

Foliage density. More leaf costs more money. A sparse canopy with visible gaps is the fastest way to spot a cheap faux tree from across a room, and it is the specification that separates two trees of identical height and identical price. Fullness is also the axis on which McGee & Co's own most-upvoted reviewer, an interior designer, judged the brand's 72 in olive and concluded that fuller trees were available for less; we go through that review in detail in the McGee & Co breakdown. Density can be published rather than guessed at: our 5.25 to 8 ft silk-foliage olive lists counted leaves and fruit for every size and runs $249 to $449 CAD.

Canopy width. Width is what makes a tree fill a corner. It is also the number most often left off a listing, which is why two 8 ft trees can look completely different in a room. If a seller publishes canopy width, that is a small sign they expect you to compare properly.

The pot. A ceramic, cement or woven planter is heavy and genuinely expensive to ship. Its presence or absence can move the real cost of a tree by a hundred dollars or more. Crate and Barrel's $249 tree includes a cement planter. Pottery Barn's tree at the same starting price ships with a plain black plastic vessel, while the concrete planter in its photography is sold separately, and to their credit they print that on the page. That disclosure, and how to read it, gets a full treatment in the Pottery Barn dupe guide.

What does not change no matter how much you spend?

The leaf material. Read the published materials lists down the ladder and they converge. Crate and Barrel at $249: "Polyester, plastic, foam and wire". Pottery Barn at $249 to $549: "Made of polyester, plastic, and Styrofoam". McGee & Co at $718 to $888: "Plastic, Polyfoam, & Iron". Iron rather than wire is a genuine build upgrade in the armature. Polyester, plastic and foam are constant.

Much of this category is sourced from a shared manufacturing base, and that is not a secret anyone is hiding. It is simply visible in the specifications the retailers publish themselves. A shopper on r/interiordecorating, in a thread that ranks on these very searches, described ordering from one retailer and receiving a tree shipped from a known faux-plant manufacturer. One customer's experience is not a rule about a whole industry, but it does explain why so many trees at very different prices photograph so similarly.

So how much is brand markup?

Some of it, and less than the internet tends to claim. Art direction, photography, showrooms, returns handling and customer service are real costs, and a brand that styles a room well is selling you a genuinely useful service: a decision you do not have to make. That has value.

The problem is only that price does not reliably predict construction. Review depth is the clearest illustration. Crate and Barrel's 5 ft olive carries 474 reviews at $249. The McGee & Co 72 in at $718 carries five. That is not a quality verdict, but it tells you how much real-world evidence exists behind each purchase.

How should I decide what to spend?

Work backwards from the room, not from a budget.

• Will anyone stand within arm's reach? If yes, pay for the trunk. If no, put the money into canopy density instead.
• How tall is the space? Above about 10 ft you are in structural territory and a steel or fibreglass core stops being optional.
• Is it near direct sun? Ask for UV-protected foliage. It slows fading in bright positions; it does not stop it, and any seller who tells you otherwise is overselling.
• Do you already own a planter? If so, buy the tree alone and save the shipping weight.

At the across-the-room end of that decision, you do not need the top rungs at all: a 4 to 6 ft olive with PE foliage on stainless-steel branches covers most hallway and corner placements at $199 to $329 CAD.

Where does Eververda sit on this ladder?

Higher than most people expect, and we would rather say so here than have you discover it at checkout. Our artificial olive trees start around $164 CAD for an 8 ft tree with a white pot, but the bulk of our range sits above the retailers listed in that table, running into four figures for fibreglass-over-steel and real-timber trunk builds. Some of our commercial specimens cost several times the RH figure. We are not the budget rung of this ladder.

Applying our own test to ourselves: our foliage is plastic, exactly like everyone else's. Many of our trees ship in a plain nursery pot rather than a decorative planter, which is the same caveat we told you to look for elsewhere.

What we publish on every listing is trunk material, real height in feet and metres, placement rating and what is actually in the box, which is the information this whole article says you should be comparing. Browse the full range in artificial trees Canada, or go straight to large artificial trees if you are working above 7 ft.

The short version: $80 buys you plastic leaves on a wire trunk in a plain pot. $900 buys you plastic leaves on a much better trunk, in a much fuller canopy, in a real planter. The leaves are the same. Everything holding them up is not.

Frequently asked questions

What is a reasonable amount to spend on a fake tree?

Work backwards from the room rather than forwards from a budget. If nobody will stand within arm's reach, a dense canopy on a plastic trunk does the job, and that exists from $199 CAD in our own olive range. If people will stand beside the tree, spend on trunk material instead. Above about 10 ft, a steel or fibreglass core stops being optional whatever you had planned to pay.

Do cheap and expensive faux trees use the same leaves?

Essentially, yes. The materials lists that retailers publish converge on polyester, plastic and foam from $249 through $888, in the retailers' own words on their own product pages. What extra money buys is a better trunk, a fuller and wider canopy and a heavier pot. The leaf material itself does not improve as the price climbs.

Why do two faux trees of the same height look so different?

Canopy width and foliage density, neither of which is captured by the height on the label. Width is the specification most often missing from listings, and two 8 ft trees can differ enough in spread to suit completely different rooms. Density is what separates a tree that reads well across a room from one with visible gaps in the canopy.

Does UV-protected foliage stop a faux tree from fading?

No. UV protection slows fading in bright positions; it does not stop it, and a seller who claims otherwise is overselling. It is still worth asking for on any tree that will sit near direct sun, because slower fading is a real benefit. Away from windows it matters far less, and you can put the money into density instead.

Is it worth buying a faux tree without a decorative planter?

Often, yes. A ceramic, cement or woven planter is heavy and genuinely expensive to ship, and its presence or absence can move the real cost of a tree by a hundred dollars or more. If you already own a planter you like, buying the tree alone in its plain nursery pot saves that entire cost and the shipping weight with it.

Competitor prices are USD list prices as published when checked in August 2026. Eververda prices are CAD and current as of 28 August 2026.