Photo not showing..........

Well established and developed flowering cherries should be pruned as little as possible - from your description it sounds like you are trying to make it into something that it isn't, with an unhappy outcome likely. If it's "unruly looking" and you have the desire to "cut it back all over" maybe you should just cut it down and grub it out.

Instead of whacking it back part way, in the hope that that will make it more attractive (it won't).

Hmmm, ok, let me try the image again. Remember this isn't my actual tree, it's just a generic silhouette showing the general idea of what I'm thinking.

The red slashes aren't so well visible, but I guess you can make them out and get the gist of it.

Every pruning situation will be different. Unfortunately the "gist" of anything except on your tree is not going to be particularly helpful.......do you not have photo of your tree?

If you go over the whole thing and make a bunch of arbitrary heading cuts - as in the above picture - you are going to make it hedge-like, with an unnaturally geometric outline and numbers of replacement shoots coming from the cut ends like bristles.

Cherries are particularly prone to sending shoots produced in reaction to pruning cuts off in completely different directions from those that the original branches were going in. There is no way that what you propose is going to enhance your tree in any way.

Well, OK, thanks for the feedback. I'll think this over some more and maybe just leave it as it is.

It would be really helpful if you could post a photo of the actual tree in question. There are a lot of flowering cherry shapes. Is it a weeping cherry? A winter picture is fine. We don’t need to see leaves to understand the shape.

click on the little pic, gal ..

your idea .... is topping a tree ... i would NOT do it ...

ken

these are not long lived trees ... comparatively speaking ... perhaps you ought to think about planting a new one in the general area.. so when this one fails.. or you just get tired of it ... you can remove it ... and have the replacement already growing strong ...

ken