Halloween decorations may be more fun than Christmas decorations. If you have a love for interior design, you’ll likely take any excuse to switch up displays around the house. With Pinterest just a swipe away, the ideas are endless. Before diving into the pumpkins and spider webs, please welcome our first guest designer, Jessica to the blog!
Meet Guest Designer, Jessica
Hey, A2O readers! I’m Jessica, a stay at home mom to a 5-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. Before becoming a mom, I was a manager at Nordstrom for almost 10 years. I have a love for fashion, especially merchandising and the creativity involved. After I stopped working at Nordstrom, I had to find a new way to release my creativity. So, I discovered my love for decorating! Our house has a lot of shelves – I love changing them seasonally and sometimes just for fun. My husband makes jokes that he feels like he is walking into a new house every 2 weeks. In my eyes, it’s like my house is getting a makeover every so often!
My fall decorations have been up for a while now. Follow along below as I walk you through my home and share my go-to tips for decorating!
Utilizing Color and Building Balance
Cream and sugar…and pumpkin spice syrup, please! No spot in the house went undecorated – especially not the coffee bar.
Following a color scheme is a great way to plan your displays. The Halloween season has a beautiful palette of colors. Burnt orange, mustard, Honeycrisp red – you can’t go wrong! Our kitchen is fairly minimal, so I stuck with neutral colors but added in pops of green to warm it up.
Another technique I follow is building around a centerpiece. In this case, the black and white canvas was the centerpiece. In order to avoid overcrowding your decorations, think both horizontally and diagonally. The coffee mug tree almost perfectly mirrors the decorative plant in the top left corner. This hack creates balance and gives the eyes a chance to see everything.
Repurposing Items and Having Fun With the Display
NO real bats were used in the making of this Halloween decoration display! On a serious note, the bat and spider web are my favorite elements here. The top of the mantle has very symmetrical decorations – the bat is a fun surprise that adds a visual effect to the scene. The same goes for the twinkle lights around the campfire logs!
Halloween decorations can get expensive. A great strategy is to repurpose items you already have. Before making big changes around the house, it’s smart to see what simple fixes you can make yourself. The blue vases are on my mantle year-round. In the summer, they may be filled with daisies. For the Halloween season, I simply replaced them with these adorable orange flowers.
I also repurposed the decorative wooden crates. Since the pumpkin on the bottom left was lacking height, the crates were the perfect pedestal. Always consider the height and width of things when creating a display.
Making the Most of a Small Space
Sometimes, your space can be limiting. It may be too small, too cluttered, or too high to reach. Luckily, half the fun of interior design is getting creative. With these shelves, I had no choice but to put the tall light-up trees on top. Rather than cluttering the bottom shelf, I added hanging lanterns to the back wall. This is where Command Strips become your best friend! It’s SO easy to add and remove elements to your displays.
Remembering the importance of building around a centerpiece, I covered some old books in craft paper to really make the big pumpkin POP!
Create a Display Worth Adoring
Trick-or-Treaters aren’t the only ones who will be admiring your porch this Halloween. Ironically enough, my Shipt delivery man left the nicest comment about my decorations. Your front yard is the first thing people see about your home – why not make an impression?!
Outdoor decorations require extra thoughtfulness. The display needs to withstand the weather, so nothing is blowing away or falling over. It is also ideal for your decorations to be seen from the sidewalk. This was the perfect excuse to break out the hay bales. The hay bales added the perfect amount of height for the pumpkins and “Welcome” sign.
Creating balance is a great tip to remember for outdoor displays, as well. The spiral topiary trees and pink mums line the porch steps and make for a beautiful warm welcome.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of my Halloween decorations – be sure to stop by Alpha to Omega’s Pinterest and save these ideas!