7 Halloween Decorations That Will Impress Trick-or-Treaters

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Halloween is coming up, and you don’t want to be the one stuck with “that” house. And in case you’re wondering, we mean the boring one with the lame or nonexistent decorations that trick-or-treaters avoid like the plague.

If you’re serious about Halloween, you want to have the “it” house this year—the one that makes visitors laugh, scream, or both with an array of phantasmal exterior decorations. And if you want to do this, you’re going to need more than a few pumpkins and a straw-stuffed bed sheet “ghost” you’ve managed to beat into a vaguely human shape.

What you need is a collection of both cutting-edge and classic decorations that will knock visitors’ socks off. By mixing newer methods, such as digital projection, with old favorites like making use of live actors, you’ll have the home everyone wants to visit.

Not sure what to do or what to buy? No worries! We’ve done the research for you—all you have to do is read

So get that candy bowl ready, because we’re about to make your home the most popular one on the block this Halloween. Prepare to frighten with these 7 awesome Halloween Decorations That Will Impress Trick-or-Treaters.

Use a Digital Projector

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One of the newest—and scariest—Halloween decorating trends involves repurposing digital projectors to create some truly realistic special effects.

This is the same kind of projector you’d use to watch movies in your home, and they’re perfect for Halloween. They’re portable, and can project a high-quality image onto any surface. You just need three components: the projector, a video containing the Halloween effects, and a surface to project onto.

For starters, you’ll want to use a projector that’s rated for at least 2,000 lumens, which is a measure of brightness. After all, what you’re projecting is going to need to outshine surrounding streetlights and any other sources of ambient light.

For Halloween effects videos, you can turn to YouTube for all sorts of spooky footage or images to project onto your windows and exterior walls.

Now for the fun part. What you project onto is up to you. You can throw ghosts up onto your garage door. You can place terrifying phantoms into your windows by hanging up sheets onto which you can project. You can even project onto pumpkins, giving them some decidedly convincing animated faces.

For maximum fun, however, try projecting onto fog or semi-transparent mesh—it will appear as if the projections are floating in midair!

Whatever you decide to project, you’ll be sure to be at the cutting edge of Halloween tech this year. Don’t skip out on what is sure to be the talk of your town.

Get a Fog Machine

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If you want an impressive display this Halloween, a fog machine is a must. But many people don’t know much about these mystery machines.

It’s time to learn!

Fog is an essential mood-setter, and the machines that produce it are simple to use. There are three main types you’ll encounter: mist makers, heated fog machines, and chilled fog machines. Each creates its own ambience.

Mist makers are very basic machines that you can immerse in shallow water, where they will create a continual, rolling mist. Often, these are tabletop size, and so they’re great as a centerpiece in a tabled Halloween display.

Next up, we have heated fog machines, which are the most common variety you’ll find outside of homes this Halloween. They pump a liquid, often called “fog juice,” into a heater, where it’s turned into a vapor and blown out as fog. This type of fog distributes itself throughout an area, creating a foggy atmosphere.

Last of all, we have chilled fog machines, also known as ground fog machines, which produce the kind of effect you’ll probably love the most this Halloween—thick, white fog that hangs low rather than expanding into the air. These use dry ice, liquid nitrogen, or liquid air to create a fog that’s cold enough to resist rising, creating a spooky graveyard mood.

You can use any one of these to make your yard a place of horror this Halloween, so head over to your local Halloween effects store and grab one.

Build the Mood With Spooky Lighting

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Lighting is an essential aspect of creating any kind of mood, but if you want the best Halloween display this year, try going subtle instead of flashy. Let’s look at how you can use light to bring in the darkness this October 31^st.

The first thing you need to know about lighting is that it accentuates its opposite—shadow. Creating deep, looming shadows is rule number one of exterior Halloween lighting. To do this, place your lights low, aiming them slightly upward. This will create grotesque, elongated shadows from anything around them.

Consider, also, what portions of your yard you’d like to be visible, and which you’d like to remain in darkness so that visitors’ imaginations do all the dirty work for you.

Next, think about color. Make use of the familiar Halloween orange to give your yard a festive, classic feel, or go with a dim blue bulb in your porch light for a more scary, dungeon-esque look. And don’t bother with the blacklights—they just look silly.

If you want to up the scares, use flickering flame blubs like these, which not only create a great, otherworldly ambience, but also deepen nearby shadows, making them seem as if they’re moving. If you really want to splurge, go for a batch of electronic candles, placing them in clusters around your porch.

Finally, if you want to use a strobe light, don’t just let it flash quickly. That’s gimmicky. Instead, set it to flash at slow, random intervals for a creepier vibe. If you’re using a fog machine, this can be breathtaking.

Light is one of the most important parts of your Halloween display, so give it careful thought if you want to be the “it” house.

Craft Natural Scares

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There’s no scary like natural scary, and so making Halloween decorations out of things like cornstalks, sticks, and leaves can be a great way to make the creep feel real this October.

At the most basic level, this means making great use of pumpkins, carving them up, placing a light within each, and using them to line your driveway, walkway, or porch.

But if you want the best house this Halloween, you’re going to need to go farther.

Cornstalks are wonderful for this. You can bind them together into scarecrows, placing a well-carved pumpkin as the head. You can stick them upright into the ground and cast a red light onto them for a menacing display meant to remind viewers of decay. You can even bend and tie them into an enormous arch for trick-or-treaters to walk beneath when they arrive at your yard.

Simple sticks, too, can be terrifying. Collect dry sticks and branches, placing them upright into flower pots. Hang electronic taper candles and fake ravens from their branches for an even moodier look.

The goal here is to make your display look as if it came from another time and place for an authentically creepy, yet tasteful, vibe, and nothing does that like natural decorations.

Use Live Actors

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Static decorations and moody fog and lighting set the stage, but for a truly great Halloween display, you’ll need actors, too. It’s time to get your whole family—and friends—involved this year by dressing them up and having them frighten or entertain trick-or-treaters.

One of the oldest tactics is still the best. Have someone dress up as what looks like an inanimate decoration, such as a masked figure in a chair, or a dead body. When trick-or-treaters come around, the person can leap up and give them a scare.

For best results, have your inanimate actor leap into action only rarely, and keep him or her in shadow so that passersby can’t quite see any small movements that would give the game away.

Get in costume, too, when you give out candy—if everything around you looks awesome, and you’re just standing there in your jeans, it’s going to look lame. Stick to your theme, get into character, and take on an entertaining persona. A frightening circus ringmaster or a demented 18^th century fop work nicely.

Otherwise, recruit your costumed family and friends to roam around your yard, menacing people from the shadows for maximum effect. You really can’t go wrong with this fun Halloween addition to your decorations.

Web it Up

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There’s one classic Halloween decoration that’s been around for an age, but isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Fake spider webs are easy to find, fun to use, and lend a classically spooky look to your home.

To do this, you’ll need to think both big and small. Stretch your fake webbing across large sections of your home and yard, making it look as if gigantic spiders have somehow trespassed into your world.

But to really make the spookiness feel intimate and real, don’t forget to cover small objects with webbing here and there. Wrap it around everyday objects like chairs or small plants to create a sense of unease and abandonment. And if you want to get the arachnophobes, place a few fake spiders into the mix!

But the most important thing to remember, when it comes to fake webbing, is to make sure you combine it with great lighting. Shadows, dim lights, and artificial candles all lend fake webbing a sense of reality, and can take them from dollar-store corniness to haunted house horror with the flick of a switch.

Go back to an old classic this Halloween, and you’ll give your scary displays a textured, spooky look.

Play Eerie Ambient Sounds

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So you’ve got your fog. You’ve designed a lighting scheme that creates a subtle sense of unease. You’ve got your decorations and actors. What’s the final thing you need to complete your Halloween scene?

Sound. No Halloween house is complete without a scary soundtrack.

For best results, think subtle. You don’t need corny howling wolves and shrill screams lending a sense of artificiality to your display. No—for this year, think ambient noise.

First, you’ll need a sound system. If available, set up something with a lot of bass. You can borrow your television’s or computer’s entertainment system for this. You want your visitors to not only hear, but to feel the sound.

As for your choice of noise, head over to YouTube and look for high quality recordings of wind, rain, thunderstorms, or creaking wood. These are surprisingly effective at creating an atmosphere of quiet dread.

Music can be great, as well, as long as it’s ambient and doesn’t overpower the rest of your display. It should build tension, but avoid loud moments which can dissipate that tension.

Combined with your other effects, sound can really frighten your visitors, so use it well.