If you’re over pumpkin spice everything, you’re in luck. Spooky season is finally here! Halloween is the biggest holiday second only to Christmas and it’s not hard to see why. What’s more enjoyable than being terrorized by the constant ringing of your doorbell as tiny ghouls and ghosts howl “Trick or Treat!” while demanding candy from you so they’ll go away?
All joking aside, it’s a hoot, and with so many different types of decor readily available, from the Dollar Store to Michael’s to Amazon, there’s no excuse you can make for not decorating your home for the spooky season — both easily and economically. If you haven’t decorated yet, there’s still time!
Set the spooky stage
If you aren’t a hardcore Halloween decorator, dressing up your front entry is the minimum requirement. With every decoration imaginable available from the drugstore to the hardware store, there’s no excuse not to at least hang a Halloween-themed wreath to welcome all those candy-grabbers. Change the exterior light bulb to green or red, and you’re done. Better yet, get a black light bulb and use glow-in-the-dark decor items. You get extra points for effort if you set a speaker up behind a carved pumpkin and broadcast haunting sound effects. Bonus points if you dress up, too!
Terrify with tombstones
If you have a bit more ambition, try adding larger props to your yard and porch. Sure, realistic tombstones can be purchased at the store, but what’s the fun in that? They also tend to be smaller than life-size. Create your own easily with Styrofoam insulation. Cut it to the shape you want, paint it to look like stone with black and grey outdoor paint and add a fun saying to it. For example, set up a bicycle or scooter with a skeleton sitting on it, write “Let ‘er RIP” on your tombstone, and you’ve got an instant photo op!
Pick your colour scream, er, scheme
Inside the house, decorating requires a bit more finesse so it doesn’t look cluttered instead of moody. Limiting your decor’s colour palette to just a few shades creates a cohesive look. Try the classic black and orange colour scheme, using orange for pops of brightness. Or try a black-white-and-grey theme. All black looks especially striking against white walls.
Mixing in touches of old brass or tarnished silver amps up the vampire glam if that’s what you’re after. Matte black and pops of gold are a very chic gothic option. This look is even more brooding if you favour Modern Gothic or Dark Academia decor with its dark walls, oversized furniture and mysterious nooks.
Add scary spiders
Spiders are fascinating and terrifying at the same time. All those legs and eyes! Make your own small spiders using styrofoam or plastic balls spray-painted black with black pipe cleaners for legs. If you want really big ones for drama, black garbage bags and black Halloween garland wrapped around heavy-gauge wire are perfect. These are also weather-resistant materials if you want to put spiders outside on your front yard or hang them above your entryway to scare visitors before they scare you. If you have an unlimited budget, you can buy a giant spider and a web big enough to cover the entire front of your house! Illuminate it with a spotlight for extra drama.
Go batty!
A bat template, scissors and black card stock are all you need to give your front door or interior walls a scary transformation. By tacking the bats to the door in the center of their body, leaving their wings free, you’ll have a colony of fluttering bats every time you open the door or when a gust of wind catches them. Vary the sizes for extra interest. A swarm of them looks especially great against white walls. You could even add a few tree silhouettes and a half moon.
Create haunting window silhouettes
This one is especially eerie if you live in a two storey home. You can suspend the silhouette of a hanging man in an upstairs window and set a strobe light behind it to create a lightning effect. But you don’t have to go quite that gruesome for great results.
Using black poster-sized stock, cut out a silhouette of a skeleton, flying witches or a huge cobweb and spiders, and tack those to the inside of your windows. Hang a white bed sheet behind them and then turn on the room’s lights. Don’t forget your garage door. That also lends itself perfectly to a haunting scene in silhouette. There are also fantastic light shows that you can purchase to create a moving swarm of ghosts or bats over your entire house, or a haunted house effect on the inside.
Haunt with ghastly ghosts
It’s scary-easy to create a yard full of ghosts. Bend chicken wire into the desired shape and height and cover with inexpensive gauze. You can spray starch over it to keep it stiff and mould it into terrifying shapes, or let the wind move it in eerie tendrils. You can also raise this on a tall pole and drape it down to the ground so it looms above the heads of trick or treaters. If you have a tall tree in your front yard, you can suspend the ghost from an overhead branch and light it up with a spotlight. Place an LED lantern directly below each of the shorter ghosts to lead people on a scary journey up your sidewalk. Say boo!
Bonus: For the easily spooked or if you’re currently selling your home
Do you prefer a less terrifying Halloween? It’s super-easy to make your home look well dressed for the season without resorting to black cats, fog machines, and the gory mess of carving pumpkins. This is especially important if your house is currently on the market and you have potential buyers dropping by to visit. The last thing you want to do is scare them off!
Set out orange or red mums in black pots and surround them with pumpkins and gourds. Instead of wrestling with sharp instruments, especially if you want to involve children, paint the pumpkins with fun designs, bats or classic Jack-o-Lantern faces. Add candles, and you have a welcoming but still festive front porch, kitchen island or fireplace focal point. Setting out a small dish filled with candy treats next to a carved pumpkin and a few LED candles is also a nice touch. Ask your REALTOR® if you’re unsure about which decorations are appropriate to leave out.
Decorating for Halloween is a great activity for the whole family. Not only do all the trick or treaters appreciate the extra effort you put in to scare them, it’s also a fantastic opportunity to meet people from all over your neighbourhood who you might never have met otherwise, creating a strong sense of community.
Stay scary and stay safe!