Halloween Yard Decorations

When decorating your home's exterior for Halloween keep in mind that you will want to light up the outside to add character and still make it safe for the trick-or-treaters who will be making their way to your front door. There are quite a few easy and unique ways that you can enhance the décor with lighting. The following are just a few tips that you can make use of.

Tip #1 How To Light Your Home for Trick or Treat--

Use Black-Lights to Create a Spooky Atmosphere

If you want to create an eerie effect with the lighting try swapping out your usual porch bulbs with some black-light bulbs. By doing this you can change the entire atmosphere of the outside of your home. You can further enhance the setting and buy some black-light geared decorations. There are different types of possible combinations that you can use from fake spider webs to hanging ghosts and skeletons that glow under a black-light or glow in the dark items. If you want to use black-lights make sure that there will still be enough light for the little ones to see by.

Tip #2 How To Light Your Home for Trick or Treat--

Using Spotlights to Enhance The Setting and Increase the Brightness

Another way to use the right lighting is to use a small ground-level spotlight to add some extra illumination to a particular area. If you have a spooky display that you want to light up, look for seasonal spotlights. Around Halloween you can find spotlights that have different covers that you can put in front of the bulb. These come in a lot of shapes and can even project moving images onto the side of your house such as flying ghosts, or an eerie full moon with witches soaring around on broomsticks. Wherever you choose to place the spotlight make sure that it's not aimed toward your front door. You want to have enough light to see the path or sidewalk by, but not enough to overwhelm your visitors.

Tip #3 How To Light Your Home for Trick or Treat--

Make Some Luminaries to Light the Sidewalk

Luminaries are an excellent way to mark the foot path to your front door. You can buy pre-made ones or put some together yourself. Buy some Halloween-themed luminary bags, which come ready to fill, and add a bit of sand in the bottom and a tea-light candle. Space them every few inches or feet depending on how much lighting you want.

You can also take empty aluminum paint cans, wash them out and use a metal punch to make a Halloween design on it. Paint them whatever color you choose, or different Halloween colors and add some sand and tea-lights or oil-filled "candles" to light them up with.

Tip #4 How To Light Your Home for Trick or Treat

Use Strings of Halloween Party Lights to Light the Path

Just like outdoor lights for Christmas, you can also find ones to use at Halloween. You can buy strings of Halloween lights in orange, black, and/or green. You can also find strands of party lights with ghosts, bats, or pumpkins covering the lights. Whatever lights you decide to use make sure that it states on the package that they can be used outdoors.

To use the strands of Halloween lights for your path, you can use mini-light stakes and put them along the outside of the path. These mini-light stakes are metal and have a special hook made into the end to hold the bulb. Your lights will hang about six inches off the ground, making a nice "runway" for trick-or-treaters.

If you wanted to hang the strands of lights higher off the ground, you can take dowel rods, cut them into four foot sections and spray paint them with glow in the dark, or black, orange, or green paint. Carefully drill out a small hole in the top of the dowel rod to hold a mini-light stake. Push them into the ground no less than six inches deep and hang your lights from these. Draping the lights up higher off the ground means that you will have more light and there will be less danger of anyone accidentally stepping on them.