Decorating Your Porch for Fall: Nine Ideas for Inspiriation
- Choose a color scheme.
Having a color scheme will help your porch look put together. Traditional fall colors like orange and yellow or rust and brown always look great. But how about pastels like soft orange, pale peach, and sage green? There are quite a few pumpkin varieties that have softer color, and mums in soft pinks and peaches look great paired with them. All white looks great, especially if your house has dark siding. Adding a bit of black to white mums and white pumpkins can really make them stand out. For extra drama, spray paint A few pumpkins and or a tree branch black — or use black containers. Metallic spray paint works well, too. Try metals like gold, copper, and bronze with dark green gourds, ornamental kale, and purple asters.
- Keep it simple.
Most of us don’t have the time or energy to go all out. A mum or aster by the front steps or a pumpkin positioned by the mailbox can make quite a statement all alone. Less is more!
- Go all out.
On the other hand, if fall is your favorite and you live for pumpkin spice, go over the top! Bring out the hay bales and scarecrows. Stand corn shocks up by the porch posts. Situate groupings of mums, pumpkins, gourds, and asters throughout the yard and place a pumpkin on each step leading up to your front door. A wreath on the door and a nearby sign that says welcome fall or grateful make nice additions.
- Cozy up your seating area.
If you have a bench or chairs on your porch, dress them up with a chunky knit blanket and some buffalo check pillows to create a relaxing spot to sit. You could even wrap existing pillows in burlap or plaid flannel if you don’t want to buy (and find somewhere to store) new ones just for fall. An area rug or doormat can make a big change to your front entry with only a little effort.
- Light the way.
It gets dark out much earlier this time of year. Hang lanterns (either solar or battery operated) from shepherds hooks along the path to your door and install some fairy lights on your porch ceiling to create a little magic. Fill your porch with pumpkins carved with abstract or geometric designs to make luminaries.
- Make use of fall naturals.
Corn shocks, hay bales, pumpkins, gourds, and Indian corn are the most common naturals for fall decorating. But you could also fill a glass vase full of pinecones and acorns to set on a table, or hang herbs up to dry on your porch. Cut hydrangeas, strawflowers, baby’s breath, Chinese lanterns, or statice from your garden to make a dried floral arrangement. Go foraging for interesting tree branches, either bare or with a few berries or dried leaves left on. Even a chunk of tree bark leaning against a pumpkin can add a special touch. Cattails or prairie grasses standing behind a hay bale look stunning.
- Get crafty.
Make a fall wreath out of the naturals you’ve collected or paint interesting designs on pumpkins and gourds. You can even hollow out a large pumpkin and drop a plant or a vase of flowers into it. Make a garland using some twine and pinecones and dried flowers. Make your own scarecrow. Paint rocks like pumpkins. Decorate a pumpkin with acorn eyes and gourd for a nose – maybe add some succulents on top for some hair. The sky is the limit. Involve the family. Create a great memory and maybe a new tradition.
- Make it unexpectedly spooky.
Place zombie hands so they come out of a pot of mums or a hay bale, fill a vase or bowl with eyeballs, or attach a plastic tarantula to your door – right by the doorknob. Be the Halloween house! You know the house, the one all the kids go to first on Halloween, with the whole yard decorated with gravestones, spooky lights, cobwebs, moving skeletons, and dozens of spooky jack-o-lanterns.
- Celebrate the season together.
Whatever you do to decorate your home for fall, enjoy it! Fall is one of the best parts of living in Wisconsin. Seeing your neighborhood filled with fall decorations spreads a little joy and brings us all a little closer together. Maybe you only get one pumpkin. Maybe you want to go all out. Either way, Pleasant Prairie Greenhouse is a great place to start. Our mums, asters, and other fall flowers are looking great! We’ve got squash and corn shocks. We’re picking pumpkins, and the gourds and other fall items are arriving. We even have some premade fall wreaths. You can also ask us to put together an arrangement of pumpkins and gourds for you. Be sure to snap a photo of it at the greenhouse, though, so you can reassemble it at home. We’re open Friday and Saturday from 10-5 and Sunday 10-4 through October.