Halloween Decorating Ideas for Restaurants & Pubs
Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, which is the best night of the week for it. This is what to put where, how long each bit takes, and what comes down fastest the next morning, written for somebody who has a venue to run and an hour to spend on decorating.
What is on this page
- Decide which night you are actually doing
- Do the door first, and properly
- The bar is your best wall
- Table decor has to survive a service
- Build one photo spot and light it
- If money is tight, put it on your staff
- Your six o'clock crowd is not your eleven o'clock crowd
- Plan the take-down before you put it up
1. Decide which night you are actually doing
Two different jobs, and they need different amounts of kit.
If you are marking the date, you need a door and a bar and nothing else. If you are running a Halloween night with a DJ or a menu, you need the room, a photo spot and something for the tables. Decide which before you order, because buying for one and doing the other is where the money goes.
2. Do the door first, and properly
Most of the people who come in walked past first. If the budget only stretches to one area, spend it in the doorway.
Tape across the top corners of the frame, a lit pumpkin on each side at floor level, one hanging piece above head height so nobody walks into it. Ten minutes. It reads from the other side of the road.
The door kit is the Storefront & Entrance Kit at £26.99: lanterns, tape, stickers, garland and floor decals.
3. The bar is your best wall
Everybody who orders a drink stands at the bar for a minute or two with nothing to look at. Nobody stares at table nine.
Hang the big prop behind the bar where people wait, run a few pumpkins along the back counter, and work cobweb into the optics shelf rather than over it. Keep it off the pumps and away from the glasswasher steam.
The hanging skull, the tealights and the photo props are in the Restaurant & Pub Trading Kit, £48.99.
4. Table decor has to survive a service
Anything on a table gets drinks put on it, plates slid past it and a two hour sitting on top of it.
LED tealights survive that. Paper does not. Anything loose ends up on the floor by nine. Keep it small enough that it does not have to be moved to lay a table, because if staff have to move it every service they will stop putting it back.
5. Build one photo spot and light it
Pick a wall with decent light, nothing messy behind it and room for four people to stand.
Props in a box on a table beside it, so people help themselves. That is the whole job. It gets photographed all night and your venue name ends up in the caption.
6. If money is tight, put it on your staff
A few accessories behind the bar beat the same money spent on wall decorations, because your staff move through the room all night and a garland does not.
Ears, hats, face paint. Keep masks off anyone carrying plates or working the cellar.
7. Your six o'clock crowd is not your eleven o'clock crowd
Same room, same night, two different audiences.
Keep the standing display friendly enough for families at teatime, then bring out anything gorier later once the early sitting has gone. If your trade changes through the evening, let the decorations change with it.
8. Plan the take-down before you put it up
The 1st is a normal trading day and you do not want to be picking cobweb off the optics during Sunday lunch.
Stickers peel, props unhook, garland lifts off. Anything that needs a drill, or tape that takes the paint with it, is the thing to think twice about. Done properly the whole lot comes down in under twenty minutes.
Which one do you need?
| Kit | Covers | What is in it | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storefront & Entrance Halloween Kit | Window plus the doorway and the pavement | Everything in the window kit, plus two LED pumpkin lanterns, footprint floor stickers, a 3m bat garland and a Danger Keep Out plaque | £26.99 |
| Restaurant & Pub Halloween Trading Kit | A room, a bar and a night on | Everything above, plus an 80cm hanging skull, twelve LED tealights, eighteen spiders, a 12-piece photo prop set and an LED light curtain | £48.99 |
Only doing the window? The Shop Window Kit is £17.99 and there is a separate guide for windows.
Questions people ask
Is it worth it for one night?
It is not one night. The door goes up days before and everybody walking past sees it in the run-up, which is when people are deciding where they are going. The kit costs less than a couple of covers.
What is the absolute minimum?
The door. Tape, one lit prop, a sticker on the glass. If you do nothing else, do that.
How do I keep it family friendly early and adult later?
Make the fixed display friendly, so pumpkins, bats and ghosts, and keep anything gorier in a box behind the bar to bring out after the early sitting has cleared.
What about candles, cobweb and kitchen heat?
Keep cobweb well away from candles, heaters, the pass and any bulb that gets hot, and put LED tealights on the tables instead of real flame. Councils have flagged flammable Halloween decorations to licensees specifically. Our fire safety checklist covers it.
How long does it take to come down?
Under twenty minutes if you avoided anything glued or drilled. Stickers peel off glass, props unhook, table pieces clear with the rest of the strip-down.
Before you put anything up: the fire safety checklist for licensed premises.