Halloween Decorating Tips to Win Points With Trick-or-Treaters
Over the past few decades, Halloween has evolved to a top-tier holiday, with more and more effort put into everything from costumes and treats to home decoration.
As more houses on your block invest in eye-catching and exhilarating outdoor décor, you don’t want your home to scare families away with its barren, dark demeanor.
If you love seeing trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, you need to decorate the exterior of your home for the season — and here are a few tips for a fun and successful outdoor look.
Stick to a Single, Unique Theme
Halloween décor can run the gamut from cute to terrifying. You can find sweet ghosties and smiling witches with friendly black cat familiars who purr as visitors pass, and you can find realistically rotting corpses, floating phantoms and creepy dolls that seem to blink in the dark of the night.
If you love the holiday, you might collect all types of decorations — but mixing such disparate themes in your front yard could confuse trick-or-treaters and keep them away from your front door.
Before you start planting Halloween décor in your yard, you should think critically about the messages you want to send about your home and the holiday in general.
Then, you can create a theme for your front yard, which will make your home more attractive to those trolling the neighborhood in costume looking for sweets. Some example themes to inspire you include:
- Haunted graveyard
- Spider web
- Haunted forest
- Monster party
- Spooky circus
- Haunted harvest
- Witch coven
Mix DIY and Store-bought Décor
Just as store-bought Halloween costumes always fall a bit flat, too much manufactured décor in your Halloween landscape tends to make your home look a bit lifeless.
Undoubtedly, you should invest in high-quality Halloween décor that fits your theme to save time and effort, but you should also be willing to build your own holiday decorations, which will make your house look unique and compel trick-or-treaters to stop by.
DIY décor does not have to be immense or elaborate — but it can be, if you truly want to impress your neighbors.
If you are ready to go big this Halloween, you might start working on one of the following extreme and exciting DIYs:
Keep Your Yard Light and Bright
To some extent, Halloween is about celebrating the darker aspects of life, which is why so much trick-or-treating occurs after the sun goes down.
Still, few families are interested in visiting houses that are quiet and dark, believing them to be vacant or otherwise disinterested in handing out candy and good cheer.
Plus, darker properties could be actually dangerous to young kids, and parents are loath to send their little ones into spaces where they cannot supervise.
Thus, regardless of the theme of your exterior Halloween decorations, you need to make sure that your property is plenty illuminated to guide trick-or-treaters to your front door — or wherever you are keeping your basket of sweets.
You should keep the lights on inside your home to let your neighbors know that you are home and eager for visitors, and you should turn on your front porch light and place luminaries along your walkways to prevent tripping.
Consider Multi-use Decorative Items
Halloween is one day of the year, and though you might be able to put your spooky decorations up for a few weeks ahead of time, you need to transition your home for the staider autumn season relatively quickly.
Thus, you might consider investing in décor that is appropriate both for Halloween and for the rest of fall. Rustic décor tends to bridge the divide between Halloween and the rest of the season, as faceless gourds and pumpkins, scarecrows and the like fit both aesthetics well.
You might also invest in plenty of candles, which can be either spooky or comforting depending on the context.
Some decorations you might need to alter only slightly to make them appropriate to remain on display until the winter holiday season begins.
Once a simple holiday for children, Halloween has become another opportunity for you to showcase your decorating skill.
However, if you want everyone to fully appreciate your Halloween décor, you need to keep trick-or-treaters in mind as you decorate outside.
Most of all, have lots of fun and enjoy the season!
Source: Cover Photo: flickr
