Spooky season has arrived and October means that it’s time to start planning for your next Halloween party. Whether you’re hosting a Halloween party for the first time or you’re a seasoned pro at planning Halloween parties, but you’re looking for something new to add to your event this year, we’ve got you covered!

Here are 5 decoration ideas for your next Halloween party, that will be bound to impress, and scare too.

At Home Halloween

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Get Glowing!

Adding decorations that glow in the dark are the perfect additions to your Halloween event – when else is there an opportunity to use glow in the dark skeletons? This Glow In The Darkness article lists the best glow in the dark supplies and these items will be perfect for your party this Halloween season. At least one of the items listed in their glow in the dark A-Z will be suitable for your glow in the dark party – if not all of them! Handing out glow sticks to your guests can be a fun party favor and help you to see each other once it gets dark as you head out for trick or treating. 

Create a Centerpiece

If you’re lucky enough to have a fireplace in your house, make use of its spooky potential by re-creating a witch’s kitchen scene, with a potion brewing in a cauldron below. Throw some dry ice into the cauldron to make a smoky cloud emerge from the bubbling broth! Make it realistic by adding candles, empty bottles labeled ‘poison’ or ‘spiders’ legs’, and plenty of creepy cobwebs along the mantelpiece shelf above the fireplace. It’s bound to be a winner and a talking piece of the party. 

You could even use the cauldron as an activity for the party-goers to play ‘bobbing for apples’, or as a slimy version of the fairground game ‘fishing for ducks’ by filling the cauldron with jelly and dead plastic ducks. 

Come up with a theme or color theme for your party. For this theme, we used black and red for a vampire theme party.

Transform the Front Yard

Not only will transforming your front yard into a spooky graveyard haunt your guests, but you’ll impress the neighborhood too by getting into the scary spirit of Halloween. You can go as over-the-top as you like with your front yard, as this is the one time of year that no one can judge you! You might want to consider spray painting the front lawn with a washable black grass paint but check the packaging before you ruin the garden. Another way to spookify the front yard is to line the pathway with fake graves or skeletons. There are even some decorations that move and pop out when motion is detected nearby. Finally, to complete your spooky front yard, chalk scary slogans like ‘beware’ on the concrete and use a smoke machine to imitate fog across the pathway, which will run chills down anyone’s spine. 

Candy Garlands

It’s not Halloween without candy, so make sure that you’re well stocked up for your party. You might want to offer your candy to your guests in alternative and creative ways that can feed into the decor of your party. For example, create a spooky garland with candy corn, add a lollipop wreath to your front door, and offer candy bars in pumpkin jars scattered across your house so that guests are never too far from their sweet fix! Candied or toffee apples always go down a treat and consider smores as an option if you’ve got a bonfire going outside since these are not only tasty, but an extremely easy way to feed lots of guests too. 

Jack-o’-Lanterns

No Halloween is complete without a good jack-o’-lantern filled with a gloomy candle glow inside. Make sure that you have plenty of pumpkins available, both carved and uncarved so that guests can try their luck at creating the most artistic lantern of them all to win a prize! To ensure that nothing goes to waste, you can use the fleshy insides of the pumpkin to actually feed your guests at the party, with a Halloween themed feast. There are plenty of pumpkin recipes out there to suit a range of different tastes, but some of the best ways to use pumpkin in a recipe are pumpkin soups, sweet pumpkin pie, roasted pumpkin curry, or pumpkin kebabs! Pumpkin normally works well with sweet spices like cinnamon, as well as extra-hot spices too like paprika and chili powder. 

Even though decorations are the most important part for any Halloween party, there’s no need to stress. Decorating the house according to your Halloween theme should be a fun process, and it’s an excuse to get everyone involved to help you. Luckily for you, decorating for Halloween is one of the easiest events to plan and decorate – especially if you use some of the decoration ideas that we’ve listed above to get inspired for your own party.