Lighting Your Halloween House

Paradoxically, one of the major factors to effective lighting is not light at all, but the shadows cast by lit objects. It's those deep, high contrast shadows that turn a pastoral daylight graveyard into a frightening nighttime cemetery. So, to get the same effect for your front yard cemetery scene, front porch or the areas around your bushes do what the pros do.

Aim your lights at steep angles. That creates very long shadows. It's what we can't see that really counts. Also, don't use too many lights. One or two is plenty to cover a wide area. You want to cover, not reveal.

Continue that 'theme' by keeping the wattage low on all lights. That hides detail and adds to the air of mystery. When we can only see dimly, we imagine all kinds of things, especially when there are the right kinds of props and decorations to help our fears along.

Light from unusual angles. Your face looks normal when illuminated from above and to the side. It creates shadows beside the nose, beneath the eyebrows and under the jaw that we don't even notice consciously. But reverse the direction of the light, come from below, and suddenly you have a scary look. It creates shadows we do notice, and it makes us uncomfortable.

The same principle applies when you're lighting your home or a Halloween horror house. We can see objects, but they appear strange. Things don't look like we're used to and that is unsettling.

Anytime the eyes and brain can't perform their normal function efficiently - picking out and identifying objects in the environment - we feel threatened. That's because we know that under those circumstances we can't deal very well with what might pop out. That creates a sense of foreboding. And that is just right for creating the mood in a Halloween scene.

Changing colors helps, too. Normal daylight is white with a yellow tinge. Change it to a deep blue, a harsh red, or that purple that comes from blacklight and again you have changed the normal environment. That helps create the sense that things are new and, in dim light, hard to anticipate.

Achieving that effect is easy. Use blacklights or red bulbs. Put colored gels (plastic filters) over a white bulb. Drape blue cloth in front of a fixture. Just make sure to keep all plastic or cloth far enough away to eliminate any fire hazard.

Change the way things look with shadows, dim light and colors and you can inexpensively light your Halloween scene the Hollywood way. You'll be a big hit with the fans.