How to Style Your Dining Table with Neutral (and Creepy) Halloween Decor

Hey there, Erin & Selena here with some Halloween decor inspiration to help prepare your home for spooky season! 

Let us preface this post with a disclaimer: we absolutely hate the color orange and refuse to decorate our houses with it. Yep, even on Halloween! Orange doesn’t exactly fit our aesthetic, which you can probably tell by most of our designs at Fleurish. Instead, we’re all about light and bright neutral spaces, and we hear many of you feel the same. So today, we’re sharing a couple different ways to style your dining room table with fun, affordable neutral Halloween decor that’s a little creepy without being kitschy… or orange.

Halloween Dining Table Decor Styled 2 Ways 

1. Spooky Skull and Dry Ice Halloween Decor

Some of you may have seen the Instagram reel we posted last year, in which Selena decorated her dining table for Halloween. It was a big hit, so this year, we want to give you all the product details to recreate the look: 

Table runner. We suggest that you start by laying a table runner. Functionally, it’ll provide a place to store all the messy decorations, preventing any potential damage to your table. Aesthetically, it’s an appealing way to anchor the arrangement and keep it from looking cluttered. We chose this one partly for the black stripes that give a nod to Halloween but also because it’s so neutral and classic that you could easily use it for other events. 

Taper candles and holders. Add some height to your neutral Halloween tablescape with various taper candles and holders. We particularly liked these candle holders that we found at Target because they come with little drip catchers. When the wax melts, these candle holders look extra creepy. 

Pro tip: Buy cheap candles to achieve a drippy, melty look when lit—expensive candle wax typically doesn't drip! 

Mini pumpkins. Bright orange Halloween decor was simply not happening at this table. Instead of purchasing classic orange pumpkins, Selena went with a pared-back approach and chose creamy-colored mini pumpkins that still said Halloween without screaming, “trick or treat!”  

Branches. Fully committed to this tablescape. Selena looked high and low around her neighborhood in search of fallen branches but was completely out of luck with all the well-manicured landscaping nearby. You might get a little luckier, but if all else fails, pop into your local craft store and get some inexpensive fake branches instead. We didn’t love the brown color of the branches we purchased, so we painted them with a glossy black spray paint and cut them down a bit so they didn’t overwhelm the table. 

Skulls. Ok, honestly, Halloween isn’t really our jam. It’s creepy and weird and orange. That said, we're going all in if we're styling some Halloween decor. We found a bag of mid-size skulls that were perfectly gross for this aesthetic and a couple of skeletons that we placed atop a few of the pumpkins. 

Spiders. If you’re going for a spooky look, why stop at skulls when you can also add bugs, right? We bought a bag of small spiders and some 3M putty that we used to hold the spiders in place around the table, on the pumpkins, and coming out of the skulls’ eyes.

Dry ice. Here’s where you can really bring your neutral Halloween decor to life. Create an incredibly cool, eerie tablescape by adding some dry ice. You can usually get a hold of dry ice on Amazon or at local hardware stores, but be careful! You should never touch dry ice with bare hands. For this tablescape, we put dry ice in vintage brass cups. But in such small quantities, the dry ice lasted only for a couple minutes. Unless you’re willing to hire someone to continually replace your dry ice, we suggest that you place a larger amount in a big cauldron so it lasts longer. For some added fun, try pouring hot water over the dry ice and watch the reaction!

1. spiders 2. skulls 3. candle holders (similar) 4. taper candles 5. skeletons 6. pumpkins sourced from a local grocery store 7. vintage-inspired brass cups (similar) 8. branches 9. runner (similar)

Table 2: Creepy Crow Decorations for Halloween

Black gauze. Rather than laying a table runner, place some black gauze on the table as a base for your arrangement. It gives an eerier vibe that looks like spider webs without the mess. 

Black candles. Switch up traditional white tapers with black candles instead for a haunted house effect. And don’t worry about purchasing candle holders—just stick them in bottle tops instead!

Crows or black ravens. We usually expect to see bats and spiders in Halloween decor. But the creepiest decorations always offer something out of the ordinary. We opted for blackbirds in various states of activity to give movement to the table. However, birds can be challenging to prop up, so try using sticky putty to keep them upright. 

Spanish moss. We love the earthiness that Spanish moss gives to this table. And because it’s so light in color, it helps keep the neutral Halloween decor cohesive. You can find Spanish moss at your local nursery. Or, for greenery you can use all year round, consider using a faux moss alternative. 

Etched amber bottles. Because the candles are tall and the moss is so short, we needed a mid-size element to balance this tablescape, so we chose vintage-inspired etched amber bottles as a good in-between (they’re just about as orange as we were willing to go). For extra height, pop some white branches in some of the bottles to break up all the deep, dark moodiness.

Napkins. Halloween is the perfect time of year to get some black napkins, like these frayed linen ones. Looking for a fun way to dress up your napkin holders? Try using a skull!

1. faux spanish moss 2. crows (large 10”) 3. etched amber bottles 4. glass bottle candle holders 5. black gauze 6. black taper candles 7. amber taper holders 8. crows (small 3.5”) 9. amber glass apothecary jars

Neutral Halloween Decor Decorating Tips

• Play with height. The most interesting tablescapes utilize objects of varying heights. In our first tablescape, we placed skulls and spiders on top of other decor, like branches. Plus, we chose a candlestick set with 3 different heights. 

• Layer, layer, layer.  If you’re constructing a spooky Halloween tablescape, more is more. It’s important to incorporate lots of different items, especially with a narrow color scheme. Last year Selena bought an obscene amount of bat stickers and still needed more packs to achieve the right look! 

• Stick with one color scheme. Classic Halloween color schemes range from black and orange to purple and green, but that’s not a strict rule. As we’ve shown you here, you can easily create a neutral Halloween arrangement with colors that you prefer. We simply suggest that you stick to a single color scheme to ensure that your dining table decor looks streamlined.

• Group in 3s. When styling your Halloween dining table decor, consider the overall composition of your table. Do you have a main focal point? Is your decor balanced throughout the tablescape? Neither of these features is completely necessary, but you want people’s eyes to move gracefully along your arrangement. The best way to achieve this is by grouping your items in 3s because for some strange reason, the human eye is attracted to odd numbers. In our first table design, we have 3 pumpkins and 3 different size candlesticks. 

• Consider all angles. Your Halloween dining table decor will be viewed from all angles of the table. So to ensure every guest has a great vantage point, turn your items to face different directions. We aren’t suggesting that you shape your decor like a donut; rather, everyone should feel like they're being watched by a skeleton or a bird, no matter the angle. Give ‘em a show!

We hope you found this neutral Halloween decor guide helpful! Be sure to share your Halloween dining table decor with us—we’d love to see what you came up with! And stay tuned because we have lots more fall inspiration heading your way. To see more of our current designs, feel free to browse through our portfolio!