How To Create a Pretty Halloween Display
Over the summer Simon and I decided to redecorate our living room (have a look at the
) and update it a little bit. In the past, we had quite a lot of orange elements in the room which has now been updated to a much softer peachy pink. Our living space used to look quite 70s with a lot of jewel tones and darker colours but now it's much lighter and a little bit more Boho. All this means that the standard orange pumpkins and Halloween decorations no longer really suit our breezy and pretty living room. I was really struggling to think of a way to add a Halloween touch to the decor in our open plan living space this year but I think I managed to create a pretty rather than spooky display.
After a little bit of a think I realised that Halloween doesn't have to be scary and there are actually lots of really pretty touches that you can add to your home to help it feel more autumnal. Halloween doesn't have to mean orange, black, purple and green in fact this time of year can still have the softness of summer carried through. The way I achieved a much prettier version of a Halloween display is simply by choosing things that I like already but with a touch of autumn.
When we decorate for seasonal celebrations like Halloween, Christmas and Easter we can easily forget to buy things that actually suit our home. I remember last year feeling quite unsatisfied with the Christmas tree as it didn't really match the rest of the decor in the flat. The same can be said for Halloween, if you don't like scary things, don't worry just choose things that suit your interior style rather than going for the obvious skulls or orange colour palette.
The first thing I did was pop along to one of my local florists in Stoke Newington. My favourite has to be
. Not only do they sell wonderful flowers and other pretty green things but they also stock a really wonderful selection of homeware, in case you're on the lookout for a new few pieces for your house. I had a pretty long browse of all their gorgeous autumnal flowers and asked one of the lovely ladies working there to make me up a bouquet. I asked her to include some pale pink, peach, pale orange and some vintage brown toned pink as well. Basically lots of peach and pink! I then spotted that they had some really lovely dried grasses and wheat so we included those along with some really unusual blush toned eucalyptus. I hope you agree that the bouquet looks absolutely gorgeous and still very autumnal despite all the pink.
I then walked along to the greengrocers and was very pleasantly surprised at that selection of non-orange pumpkins and squashes. We are totally spoilt here in London with good quality greengrocers so if you struggle to buy pumpkins that aren't orange try going along to a farmers market or go pumpkin picking yourself for the best colour options available. I picked up a gorgeous pale mint pumpkin which was the largest, a small forest green one and a slightly squished looking pale yellow / green pumpkin too. I was actually on the hunt for white pumpkins but these green ones were even better.
The next stage was to gather various things around the flat that I thought worked tonally to create the display. I'm sure if you have a look around your home you'll find so many props that will work for seasonal displays, you definitely don't have to go out and buy props for this sort of thing.
I used my collection of vases, most of which I bought from
, they feature a textured white and oatmeal pattern. I also have a wonderful brown glass vase from the 70s that I still love. The last few elements to help style this scene were made up of my brass toucan, a gold candle and one of my cacti. After a little bit of a play and rearrange I had a set up that I really liked.
For the purposes of this blog post I wanted to set up a display that sat completely alone but also show you how something like this will quite happily sit with what you already have in your home. The first group of images show the display with nothing else on the side board, the last few photos show what this type of decoration also looks like when you nestle in a few of your usual objects in with the scene. As you can see, as long as you stick with the colour palette and style used in the rest of your home you can easily create harmonious seasonal displays.
The only rule here is to pick things that look autumnal that also blend with your home. Use colours and objects that you already have to create seasonal decorations without being too obviously spooky!
I hope you found this styling tutorial useful and I look forward to bringing you a few more interior related posts very soon.