10 Cheap DIY Halloween Decorating Ideas (Indoor & Outdoor)

Halloween Decorating Ideas Halloween brings out the kid in most of us. The air starts to cool, pumpkins appear on grocery store shelves, and before you know it, you’ve turned your front porch into a mad scientist’s lab.

Outdoor Halloween Decorations

Whether you go trick-or-treating, tell campfire ghost stories, or have backyard parties, Halloween offers fun fall events for everyone. With these inexpensive Halloween decorations, you can add some simple touches to your front porch for the kids, or turn your entire yard into a spooky display.

1. Backyard Cemetery

This classic Halloween decoration idea turns your yard into a creepy cemetery. Use reclaimed materials to create a free graveyard. To create your haunted cemetery, cut different shapes out of cardboard and paint them to look like aging tombstones. Once they dry, you can arrange them on the lawn to look like a miniature graveyard.

2. Haunted Trees

Make your yard come alive with this spooky craft. If you have trees in your yard, you can use oven-baked clay to give the trees spooky faces. Simply create a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth for each tree, and attach them to the trunks.

Place a portable radio or speakers near the tree and play your favorite eerie soundtrack to draw even more attention to your haunted trees.

3. Reusable Jack o’ Lanterns

Jack o’ lanterns are staple Halloween decorations, but some of us would rather not deal with cutting and carving pumpkins every year. Hobby and craft stores sell artificial pumpkins you can carve and light. Best of all, you can store them for next season

4. Coffin Cooler

With a little imagination, and some wood and nails, you can create your own life-sized coffin, which you can use in a dozen different ways. I turned mine into a cooler to hold drinks for an outdoor party. My neighbor used his to create a gravedigger scene in his front yard on Halloween. You can also use your coffin for a spooky planter or as a table during a party.

Indoor Halloween Decorations

Indoor decorations are great way to make a Halloween party feel more authentic. In one afternoon, you can turn the inside of your house into an eerie mansion.

1. Floating Hands

You can turn clear plastic gloves into severed hands, and then place them around your house, sneak them into a chip bowl, or even make a garland out of hands. Whenever possible, use a fake hand to shake hands with arriving guests, and then release the hand and feign dismay.

2. Halloween Garland

A simple Halloween banner is an artsy and cheap way to add some festive decorations to the inside of your house. Depending on the look you’re going for, you can make your garland eerie or more fall-oriented and cheery.

3. Specimen Jars

With a few leftover glass jars, you can convert a table into a scientist’s lab. By tossing just about anything you can imagine into a glass jar with some food coloring, you can quickly create a cheap Halloween decor piece. Look online for craft ideas for fingers, eyeballs, and other body parts to fill your specimen jars

4. Flying Bats

With a few pieces of felt and some tape, you can have a gang of bats flying around your living room in no time. You can easily make bats and put them up just about anywhere.