Fall is here and time for our favorite time of the year – Halloween! Nothing says Halloween like cool lighting. There are so many ways to decorate your house for this awesome event, indoors and outdoors. You can create your own DIY lighting projects or you can order unique lights to set the mood. There are so many cool options out there. Make sure to take a look at all the ideas especially if you have kids.

The Best Outdoor Halloween Lighting Ideas

Spooky Window Silhouettes

My house in NY had a huge front porch with many windows. We took advantage of this to create an amazing Halloween scene across the windows. While these are not lights, the lighting inside the house is super important to make these pop from outside. My porch had a lot of lighting on the ceiling but if you don’t you can simply wrap regular lights (even Christmas lights!) around the window itself.

We created these characters with black paper oak tag. Danny drew the outline of the character with a pencil and then we cut them all out. We stuck them to the window with a funtack. The kids loved it!

PIN FOR LATER!

Indoor Halloween Lighting Tips & Tricks

Flickering Spider Lights

Get some mason jars or upcycle old food glass jars to make these fun spider lights by Tip Toe Fairy. You will spray paint the tops black and spray the glass part with frosted glass spray paint. Fill the glass with white spider webs, rubber spiders, and one tea light. You can spread these around the front walkway to welcome guests.

Glam Wreath

Add a little glam to your entrance with this fun wreath made of purple and black boas. The Tip Toe Fairy shows you how to put this together with battery operated lights and a few other inexpensive materials you can get at your local Dollar Tree.

Orange Lights

Use orange string lights to wrap around your trees and pumpkins on your front porch. 

Red Lights

Want a more gory scene? Use these bloody hands and feet lights across the front of your house.

Purple Lights

Light up your pathway with these cool purple lights or cover your window with a large spider web.

Shaped Lights

Get lights in different shapes like spiders, ghosts, or bats. Looking for a witch theme? Check out these awesome light up witch hats that you can place all over your front yard.

Projectors

Consider a projector with spooky scenes (they are not just for Christmas!). You can also pair this with a cool fog machine for an amazing party atmosphere indoors.

Large Lighting Coverage

Use curtain or mesh lights to cover a large area such as your fence or garage.

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The Best Indoor Halloween Lighting Ideas

Kitchen Pendant lights

Create a really spooky atmosphere with these ghost lights in your kitchen. We created these by cutting up a white plastic tablecloth and drawing the face with a marker. Check out the step by step instructions to make these kitchen ghost lights.

Bloody Wine Bottle Candles

For our gory Halloween dinner party, Danny and I created these gorgeous wine bottle candle holders. They are so easy to make, all you need is a red crayon. Burn the red crayon over the white candle and watch as the wax melts onto the white candle creating a bloody look. Make sure to check out all the details for this Halloween tablescape.

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Monster Christmas Tree

If you love Christmas trees, here’s your excuse to get out your tree earlier in the year….make a Halloween Tree! For this amazing decor you will need colored string lights (we used orange) and a bunch of stuff from Dollar Tree. They have so many Halloween ornaments, skulls, lanterns, and bows to fill up your tree. Read about all the monster tree details here. Cover the bottom with black plastic tablecloth and a bunch of foam tombstones. Ideally this tree goes in front of your house or right on the porch. We promise your trick-or-treaters will love it when you open the door.

Easy Halloween Candles

Decorating candles is a very easy DIY great for beginners. Most of the work is done with the candle color. Albion Gould simply added some pretty ribbon to purple candles and set them on a pretty tray.

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Orange and Black Lamp Shades

You can always use home decor that you already have out and spice it up with Halloween colors. Get yourself some fall fabric or Halloween ribbon or fabric to wrap your lamp shades.

Upcycled Bottle Lights

We all have empty glass bottles in our recycling bin. Here’s a great way to reuse those soda or wine bottles for a cool centerpiece or mantle decorations. Pillar Box Blue shows you how to create a fun silhouette on the bottle so the lights shine through.

Make sure to check out this tutorial on the best way to remove labels from bottles.

DIY Skull Wall Decor

If you have a nice space on the wall you’d like to fill up, try recreating this light up skull with neon LED light wire frame. We love this because it’s pink (but you can make it any color you want). This project is great for a door or a child’s bedroom.

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Halloween Lights for Kids Parties

Planning a party for your kids and their friends? Here are some spooky lighting ideas that are safe for kids to be around.

Milk Jugs

Note for September: after you chug down a big gallon of milk, save them! White milk gallons make the perfect ghosts. All you have to do is draw faces on them with a marker. Then fill up the gallons with string lights. Short battery operated lights work best for this DIY.

Laundry Jug Jack-o-Lanterns

Did you notice that your laundry detergent bottle is orange or green? Well Soccer Mom Blog did. And she took advantage of the colors. After removing all the labels, she simply drew a spooky face on the bottles and added tea lights. No painting involved!

3D Haunted House

These cool haunted houses would be great to put on party tables. Easy Crafts for Kids provides a free house template you can print out right at home. All you have to do is glue it together and add an LED candle inside.

Flame Free Paper Luminaries

If you are hosting a Halloween party for kids, you can use these cute ghost luminaries to decorate your space – or better yet – use these as a party activity and have your guests make them! You only need three things: Sharpie markers, white paper lunch bags, and flameless tealights. That’s it! You can get all these items really cheap at your local dollar store.

Black Cat Luminaries

Here’s a slightly different version of paper bag luminaries with black cats. Check out the full tutorial of how to create the black cat for this fun paper craft.

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Colorful Halloween Luminaries

We love this DIY project from Crafts by Amanda because they are so colorful. You can have it match anything in your house. Here she colored the outside of the jars which makes it easy for beginners. A sharpie makes a spooky face and add tea lights inside.

Skull Lanterns

These spooky skull lanterns would look great on a sophisticated entryway table or a mantle because they are simply black and white. The Country Chic Cottage has a full video tutorial on how to make them using mason jars.