Darcy Miller Shares How to Light Up Halloween With Décor You’ll Want to Keep Up for Months

Last October, I was so busy celebrating everything that I didn’t start thinking about Halloween décor until much later than usual. I needed something I could set up in my foyer quickly, which would be eerie enough for a Halloween party and make the place look good when I wasn’t entertaining. The solution was to light up Halloween night—and every night after that—with a magical, illuminated “tree.”

This time of year, the nights get longer, and we could all use a little sparkle. I decided to fill my foyer with twinkling string lights but add some creepy touches to make them just scary enough for Halloween.

You start setting the scene by creating an eerie but elegant enchanted tree with a tall glass cylinder full of branches. (These can come from the florist or forage from your backyard; if the branches are heavy, add a few stones in the bottom of the vase to weigh it down.)

Then, you wrap each branch with string lights, hiding the battery packs under furniture or behind the vase. Now, this is the genius part: Stop here, and you have an elegant display that you can keep up all the way through New Year’s—and decorate for the season with a few simple swaps.

To customize the look for Halloween, I added faux cobwebs to the branches—the lights make them shimmer in a cool but creepy way. (Go light on the cobwebs, sticking to the ends of the branches, if you plan to repurpose the display for another holiday, as they can be tricky to remove.)

Then, I placed some crawly critters on the branches—rubber snakes, a few faux crows or ravens, and some bats and spiders, including paper ones made by printing our downloadable templates on black paper and cutting them out. (If you don’t want the branches to get too heavy, stick to paper bats. You can affix them to the vase or your walls, which won’t weigh down your “tree,” or use glue dots to stick them to glass vessels for your tabletop flower arrangements.)

With some hurricane lamps filled with battery-operated candles, a hanging “moon” light, and a patch of white pumpkins on the ground, this frightening forest looked elegant enough for a Halloween cocktail party but eerie enough to thrill trick-or-treaters when I opened the door.

Once the calendar turns to November, simply remove the bats and other critters and remove the cobwebs. (If you’ve kept them to the ends of the branches, you can simply cut off the end of the branch itself or cut off the cobwebs themselves.) Now, add some fall décor, and you’ll have an illuminated harvest scene that couldn’t be more welcoming for Thanksgiving. I’ve mixed berries and millinery birds in with my branches for an unexpected take, but gourds, acorns, leaves, and a little gold spray paint work, too.

Post-Thanksgiving, remove the birds or leaves and add in some winter berries, or hang ornaments or “snowflakes” from the branches, and you’re lighting up the winter night all the way through New Year’s Eve. (You might even spray-paint the branches gold for the occasion!) With a few simple tweaks, this last-minute Halloween display can dress up your foyer or fireplace for months and holidays to come.