What makes a Halloween decoration light up
Most Halloween decorating is seen after dark, and that is exactly when unlit pieces fade into the room. A light up decoration solves it by carrying its own glow. Ours do it in three different ways: a small battery light tucked inside a paper house so the windows shine from within, fairy lights woven through felt or paper layers, and string lights wrapped around a piece so the shape itself glows. Nothing here needs a spotlight aimed at it, and nothing depends on the room lights being on.
The Halloween village is the heart of the collection
The village is eight paper houses, each one heavyweight paperboard with a battery powered light inside. Three are new this year: the Bootique, the Cauldron Cafe, and Madame Mystic. They are built close to the same scale from one season to the next, so a village started a few years ago keeps growing instead of starting over. Three houses is usually where a shelf stops looking like one decoration and starts reading like a little street.
- Madame Mystic Paper House, 7 inches tall
- Cauldron Cafe Paper House, 7 inches tall
- Bootique Paper House, 4.5 by 3.5 by 6 inches
- Plus five houses from earlier seasons, all built to coordinate
The statement piece: the Maren Baxter Haunted Paper House
Sixteen inches wide by sixteen tall, and the largest lit piece we make. Norwegian artist Maren Baxter drew every ghost, skeleton, and crooked tree by hand, and our studio brought her drawings to life in layered paperboard with gold foil. Fairy lights are included and you tuck them between the layers yourself, so you decide which windows carry the glow. It runs on a timer, and it is a limited first run.
How they turn on, and whether you need an outlet
Almost everything here runs on batteries, which is what makes it easy to place. The lights are included with each piece, the batteries are not, so it is worth having a pack on hand the day a box arrives. The paper houses and the Maren house run on a timer that stays on roughly six hours and off for eighteen, so once you switch it on the first evening it keeps coming on around the same time each night without you thinking about it. The light up witch hats work differently and come with a remote, so all three go on at once from across the room. The one piece that plugs in is the Light Up Decor Broom.
These are indoor Halloween decorations
Paper, felt, and fabric all do their best work out of the weather, so plan these for inside the house. A mantel, a bookshelf, a console by the front door, a stair landing, or a windowsill where a trick or treater looks up and sees the glow from the walk. A dark or dim room is where they look best, which is another way of saying they are at their strongest exactly when people are over.
What to buy first
If you are starting from nothing, the Spooky Season Lighted Banner at 19.99 is the least expensive way in and the fastest to hang: six feet of layered felt with eight feet of fairy lights running through it and a ten foot ribbon for hanging. If you want the piece people comment on, start with a paper house at 34.99 and add one or two each fall. If you want one showstopper and nothing else, that is the Maren house.
Sizes at a glance
- Light Up Decor Broom, 50 inches tall, wrapped in string lights, plugs in
- Hanging Light Up Fabric Bat Set, two bats at 20 and 26 inches wide with wire frames
- Light Up Halloween Witch Hats, set of three at 12, 15, and 18 inches, remote included, 3 AA batteries per hat
- Spooky Season Lighted Banner, 6 feet wide, cream letters on black felt
- Maren Baxter Haunted Paper House, 16 by 16 inches
Packing them away
The paper houses fold or pack flat, the felt banner does not crease, and the fabric bats keep their shape on their wire frames. These are pieces meant to come back out every October, which is part of why unfolding the village turns into its own small tradition.
