Halloween Decor Ideas for Indoors: Vintage and Elegant Tips
Halloween is such a fun holiday for decor. Christmas and fall are serious commitments; Halloween is as whimsical or spooky or serious or silly as you like. You can’t mess up…Halloween. Halloween decor for indoors is even lower stakes. The neighbors never see it.
This is an article about halloween decor ideas.
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And while outdoor Halloween decor tends to be the show stopper (or the neighborhood competition), this article is all about indoor Halloween decor. But see our Halloween porch decorations post if you’re working on the front of the house.
These skull knobs are a super fast and easy DIY Halloween hack. Just swap out any knobs for instant spooky.
We prefer things that last, so most of what’s here uses black glass, tarnished silver, amber glass and candlelight instead of orange and purple plastic. It also costs less secondhand, since black and amber glass turns up at estate sales year round and doesn’t get priced as Halloween.
These are a super fun Halloween pick! So easy to make any little side table, dresser or corner of cabinets feel spooky and fun.
If you want one thing to build around, consider a long black lace runner. It gives clear glass and silver something to sit against, and it packs away flat.
Each section has an arrangement you can copy and a few pieces to look for. Some of them are in our Etsy shop. The rest are search links, so you can find your own version.
Elegant Halloween Decor
The version of Halloween that reads as elegant rather than costume usually comes down to two things: a narrow palette, and lighting that comes from inside the room instead of from overhead.
For the palette, pick two metals and one glass color and stop there. Tarnished silver with black glass works. So does brass with amber. Adding a third metal is where a table starts to look like a collection rather than a setting.
For the lighting, tapers and votives do more than any object you can buy. Candlelight sits low, so it catches the rims and edges of glass and leaves the rest of the room dark, which is most of the effect.
You can get a classy Halloween table without a single Halloween object in it. Black candles in old silver, a few pieces of dark glass, and something dried rather than fresh in the vases will read as October to anyone who walks in.
If you want one cue that the room is decorated on purpose, cobwebbing is more convincing than props. It’s affordable, it photographs well, and it comes down in one pass.
Black tapers are worth buying rather than improvising. Unscented ones burn down fast and drip, and a scented taper in a dark wax holds its shape longer in a warm room. Look for old silver-plate holders to put them in, since the plating wears through to copper at the high points and picks up the flame.
Read next
- Fall DIY Decor: Painted Wood Slice Pumpkins
- 30+ Fall Living Room Decor Ideas to Grab Now (with Vintage Style)
- 40+ Fall Dining Table Decor Ideas to Grab (with Vintage Style)
Vintage Halloween Decorations
Old glass and metal do most of the work here, and almost none of it was made for Halloween. Apothecary bottles, oil lamps, wire-wrapped jars and dark pressed glass were household objects, so it feels more like spooky atmosphere instead of dead-on (pun intended) decoration.
A few things you can keep an eye out for at estate sales and flea markets. Amber and smoked glass, because glass lights up from inside with a flame and real or faux, the flicker just feels unsteady. Anything with a wire cage or mesh over it, since the shadow it throws is more interesting.
Put a light source behind glass (or inside of it) rather than in front of it. Front lighting turns amber into brown. A votive set behind a bottle, or a string of fairy lights dropped inside a wide-mouth jar, gives it the lit up look you want.
If your bottles are clear you can fill them. Empty glass photographs as simple and nice, which is fine. But if you want something more you can try dried wheat, black candy, or beads all work.
You have to buy matches anyway (secondhand isn’t a thing!) so might as well make them beautiful these black matches are spooky (or sexy, or both) and we love Archipelago’s Black Forest dark tapers and matte glass black jars too.
Check out Archipelago’s beautiful Black Forest Letter press candle for dark and moody that smells amazing.
Halloween Mantel Decor
A mantel (or, um, mantle if you insist… but it’s not) is a narrow shelf, so it fails in predictable ways. Everything ends up the same height, or everything ends up pushed to the middle, or the face of the fireplace below stays empty while the top gets crowded.
Start with two tall things at the ends. Candlesticks work, so do vases. Then fill between them with objects that sit lower than the tall pair, and leave the middle slightly open rather than centered on one hero object.
We love vintage decor and upcycling things, like using these salt cellars to hold tea light candles.
The face of the fireplace is the part people forget. It’s a wide flat band right in the middle of the wall, and a mantel that stops at the shelf looks unfinished from across the room. Trailing stems, garland, or a length of black lace hung over the edge of the shelf fixes it.
Silver is the only bright thing in the arrangement, so it works against a dark mantel. Put your brightest objects on top, and let the dark ones sit against the wall.
Halloween mantels are so much fun. Don’t overthink it, it’s a brick shelf during a dark holiday. You do you.
Halloween Kitchen Decor
The kitchen has cabinet tops, floating shelves, open shelving, the island, the counter runs, and the windowsill over the sink.
Glass canisters are the useful thing here because they already belong in a kitchen. A set of three amber ones with lids looks like storage until you take a lid off and drop a votive inside, and then it’s a lantern. Nobody has to move it to cook.
Open shelving lets you stagger heights across two or three levels instead of one.
Watch the counter color. If you have dark granite counters you might want a silvery tray or even a marble base to set your black glass on, something with contrast. Same if you have amber sitting on dark brown counters. If you have light counters you could add black lace or chiffon as a runner, though that’s only practical in a corner not subject to damp and crumbs.
Grab these apothecary style food canister jars in our Etsy shop!
Light from behind or inside the glass, not from above.
Keep the stove, the sink and the fridge clear.
Halloween Dining Table Decor
A dining table is a big flat rectangle, and the thing that goes wrong is scale. One small arrangement in the middle of six feet of table looks lost.
Run something the length of it instead. A black lace runner, or a strip of chiffon, gives everything on the table a common ground and makes a few objects look like a set.
Black glass needs help on a dark table. If your table is walnut or anything close to it, put a light charger under the black plate so the plate has an edge. A white or cream plate with a black rim does this and it also means you are layering two patterns instead of one.
These vintage black cups and saucers are so cool. We love the square saucers. For special potions or daily tea.
Candles at eye level block conversation. Tapers are tall but thin, so people see past them. A tall arrangement in the center does not work the same way.
We are obsessed with these gorgeous black forest tapers by Archipelago. Beautiful for a moody dark look in a bedroom, a black table decor, or during the holidays.
If you are setting more than two places, repeat. The same plate three times looks deliberate. Three different plates looks like what you had.
Grab real antique silver on copper candlesticks in our Etsy shop!
For glassware, black stems disappear against a dark runner and clear bowls catch the candlelight above them. That is the part people notice.
Halloween Coffee Table Decor
A coffee table gets looked at from above and from the side, which is different from a mantel or a dining table. Anything flat disappears when you are sitting on the sofa.
Height fixes it. A stack of two or three books under one object lifts it into view, and a footed dish or a pedestal bowl does the same thing without needing books.
Amber glass is worth using here because the light in a living room is usually low and warm already. A footed compote with a votive burning inside it lights up from within and you see it from the sofa.
Leave room for the table to be a table. People put down drinks and remotes and feet. A cluster at one end and a clear half is more usable than a centered arrangement you have to move every evening.
An oil lamp works on a coffee table if you have somewhere to put it that is not in the path of someone’s knee.
Black lace over the corner of a wood table breaks up a big plain surface. Keep it away from the edge where it gets pulled.
Witch Decor
Witch decor is whatever you make of it. For the truly devoted (pun intended) there are probably rules to this stuff. We’re not that serious.
We love the idea of “you just missed her” moments. An unmistakably witch’s broom or two in a corner. A cauldron by the fireplace with a couple of apothecary jars beside it. A hat rack with a pointy black one hanging off it.
Or go the other way and curate a collection of vintage bottles.
You can DIY the jars too. A brown grocery sack cut down to labels, a permanent fine point pen, and steady handwriting, and you can letter labels onto anything. No one is actually going to check for a stash of hemlock. We’d just grab some vintage bottles and call it.
Candles and a mirror finish it. A mirror behind the arrangement doubles the candles and gives you depth in a corner that has none. Old mirrors with spotted silvering are good here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What colors work for an elegant Halloween?
Black, silver and amber, with candlelight. Two metals and one glass color is enough. Orange is optional and you can skip it entirely without the room reading as anything other than Halloween.
How do you decorate for Halloween without buying Halloween things?
Use glass and metal you would keep out the rest of the year. Dark pressed glass, apothecary bottles, oil lamps, old silver. Add candles and something dried instead of fresh, and the season does the rest.
Where do you find vintage Halloween decorations?
Estate sales and flea markets, year round rather than in October. Black and amber glass gets priced as glassware in February and as Halloween in October.
How do you make a Halloween mantel look finished?
Two tall objects at the ends, lower objects between them, and something hanging over the front edge of the shelf. The face of the fireplace below is the part that usually gets left empty.
Closing
That is the inside of the house. If you are working on the front of it, our Halloween porch decorations post covers the door, the steps, the planters and a couple of projects you can finish in an hour.
