Halloween Dollar Store Decorating Ideas

Halloween isn’t just for kids. Many older adults also want to make Halloween spook-tacular when it comes to decorating.

And you don’t need to spend a lot of time or money to create a bewitching mood.

Most people are bargain conscious, making dollar stores a great place to shop, says Karen Michele Parziale, an interior designer in Hoboken, New Jersey. And with some imagination, she adds, “people can be a little crafty and clever.”

U.S. consumers plan to spend $104 per person on Halloween this year, with about a third of that on decorations, according to data from the National Retail Federation. Whether you want to create a haunted house or just add Halloween colors to your decor, you can spend a fraction of that on budget-friendly home trimmings at dollar stores like Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar.

“For the bargains you’re getting, you can’t go wrong,” says lifestyle specialist and event planner Michelle Madison of Miami. She suggests using dollar store items as a starting point to create your own Halloween style. “The more out of the box, the better.”

Keep in mind that some items cost more than $1 at dollar stores, especially on their websites, where you may have to buy in bulk to get a lower price. And items at Dollar Tree now typically cost $1.25 or more.

Here are 11 ideas to create Halloween fun — including crafts to do with the grandkids! — using products found at dollar stores:

1. Creepy entrance

People are making the entrance to their house a Halloween focal point, welcoming guests with a spooky wreath or spiderweb spread across the front door. It can make your entrance stand out if you live in an apartment or residential building, says Madison, who in the past has decorated her front door with bags of candy strung across a plastic background of gray bricks.

2. Outdoor decorations

People like to decorate their front yard because that’s what visitors see first. Outdoor decorations, such as jumbo inflatables and 12-foot skeletons, seem to be getting bigger and bigger each year. If you don’t have the muscle or the time for outsize decorations, decorate your outdoor trees with garlands, ornaments and string lights. Or go smaller with pumpkins — unadorned or carved into scary silhouettes. Pumpkin carving is also something you can do with friends or grandchildren.

3. Indoor Halloween tree

Trimming an indoor tree for Halloween just like you would a Christmas tree is popular again this year. At Dollar Tree, you’ll find various Halloween tree ornaments, including black and purple glitter balls, for $1.25 each and 6-foot-long pumpkin garland for $3.

Parziale, 65, suggests decorating a smaller artificial tabletop tree with a pumpkin garland and a string of skull lights to keep it simple. “People, especially older people, just want to make it easy and not overly complicated,” she says.

4. Skulls and skeletons

If you love skelly the skeleton, but it’s too big, consider downsizing. You’ll find all sorts of smaller skeletons — from an 18-inch hanging skeleton to a skeleton garland or skeleton string lights — at dollar stores. Or focus on skeleton parts, such as the skull or spooky hands. Skeleton parts range in size from life-size to a bag of tiny skulls — and some either glow in the dark or light up thanks to batteries.

Madison likes to take skulls, spray-paint them white and add faux gems to create a glam skull. To see how she does it, check out her DIY glam-skull video on Pinterest. “Some people go for the gore, but others love the tongue-in-cheek, like … skeleton flamingos here in Florida,” Madison says.