Bring Back the 90s: Easy Retro Halloween Decorating Ideas

Growing up, fall was one of my favorite times of the year. From the fall leaves, my moms cozy decorations, cozy tv shows and movies, parties, and of course trick or treating, I loved all of it. As I got older, while I was still living at home, I began to decorate my room for Halloween. With each year throughout college I collected more and more decor. When I moved in with my husband, what turned into a few totes of decor ended up growing into a shed full of holiday decor. Decorating for holidays is something my husband and I have grown to love together. We love hosting, and most of all love having a warm and cozy environment to spend our days and nights in.

Each year, our collection of holiday decor continues to grow. While we get some new pieces from stores each year, we love to thrift and consign. So many of our home decor pieces have been collected over the years together and really just feel so special to us. We love having unique and vintage decorative pieces in our home, and love the memories of finding the items together.

This year, we decided to do a "90s/Early 2000s" theme for our decor. We really wanted to capture the nostalgia of childhood and the times where fall and Halloween just felt so colorful and so cozy. To do that, we were able to use a lot of the decorative pieces we already had, but we also had to buy a few more! So below, I am going to include some of the things we did to give our home that nostalgic Fall feeling!

Paper Cut Outs

Many of you probably remember these cut outs, and many of you probably still have and use them now! These bring such a fun, nostalgic feeling to your home. I am immediately reminded of seeing these on the walls in the episodes of old movies and sitcoms, like Home Improvement. It brings back such a retro, feeling and adds a lot of color to your home. We found our paper cut outs from places like: Target, Amazon, and one of them from Dollar Tree years ago. They are very affordable, and easy to hang up with some strong tape. It is an affordable, quick, and easy way to give your home a colorful and cozy feel this holiday season.

This year we put cut outs throughout our kitchen. Every cabinet has a cut out on it, or kitchen table nook has a skeleton cut out, and we even have another skeleton (not pictured) as you enter into the kitchen that just feels so fun!

Warm, Bold Colors

The next thing we did to give our home that warm, cozy, and nostalgic feeling was a lot of colors and warm lighting. Growing up Fall and Halloween was so colorful; bright orange, purples and greens, mixed with the natural fall colors were so common. In addition to that, warm incandescent lighting was used to give your house a warm glow. With so many lights being Led this year, it can be difficult to find orange and purple lighting that appears warm, despite being Led. In fact, most of our lights right now are considered Led lights, but it takes trial and error to find the ones that still give off that warm feel.

For our decor, we love to decorate with pieces that are very colorful. Jack O Lanterns, Pumpkins, Frankenstein, etc. We love the old school decorative pieces and colors. A lot of stores still sell pieces like this. But I like to find a lot of our pieces at thrift/consignment store for that warm and cozy feel. Sometimes stores like Dollar Tree, Walmart, and this year especially Target, all have extremely colorful Halloween pieces out.

Blow Molds

Blow Molds are not unique to just the 90's and 2000s, in fact they have been around for much longer. However, these give your home such a unique, warm, nostalgic feeling. Some of our blow molds we have collected are pictured above. Thankfully, these seem to be making a comeback, so it is much easier to get your hands on one of these than it was a few years ago. Stores like Lowes, Cracker Barrel, Target, Walmart, and others are bringing these back for the holidays. We currently have collected about 6 over the years. We have a Haunted House (pictured above) from Cracker Barrel this year. We also purchased a dog in a Halloween costume and a Casper blow mold from Lowes. We have an Owl from Target. And a ghost and cat from Michaels. They make your space so cozy, so colorful, so nostalgic, and really just so much fun.

Cobwebs/Spiders

Now I know many people use cobwebs/spiders for decor, this is something I do not see quite as often anymore and I remember seeing a lot more of it growing up. I especially love putting cobwebs over a mirror to give it that "Haunted House" feeling. This year we took a mirror in our entry way and ran cobwebs over the mirror and lanterns. We ran purple spider lights through it, then at the base of the mirror, we filled a bowl with lights and spiders.

I hope you all love this article and it gives you some inspiration for your own decor! I will be sharing more detailed decorating tips and images from within our home hopefully very soon.