Whimsical Halloween Accents Decorate This Designer's Cozy Cottage

Kara Williams’ mother asks her the same question every October. “She’ll call and say, ‘Tell me, how many pumpkins do you actually need this year?’” Kara says. “And I always remind her that I can never have enough pumpkins.”

In fact, passersby often mistake the front yard of her cottage in Everett, WA, for a pumpkin patch. Gourds of every size, shape, and color spill off the front porch, fill the yard, and line the white picket fence that rings the property. “There’s nobody on our block wondering if we’ll be giving out candy on Halloween,” says Kara, who also hosts a big annual Halloween party for 30 or so friends.

"The irony is that I didn't really like Halloween as a kid," she says. “I always found the decorations so dark and grim. So I make a real effort to be the house with all the fun. It’s more of an eclectic, lighthearted take on Halloween at our little house.”

Kara creates an easy-to-replicate look at the front door. She makes a twig wreath and paints it black, then leans cornstalks from the pumpkin patch. Kara makes at least three trips to the pumpkin patch to stock up. “There’s not a variety I don’t love. I should probably start growing my own,” she says.

Kara, who shares her seasonal decorating ideas on Instagram at LittleHouseonChestnut, worked with her husband, Tanner, to revive the cottage and restore its 1901 period charm. “We wanted to bring it back to its old self,” Kara says. And she insisted on a neutral backdrop with plenty of black and white for contrast—a palette that allows her style of Halloween decor to fit right in. Now she decorates the house with an artful mix of antiques, modern pieces, and furniture she and Tanner built themselves.

“When it comes to decorating for a holiday, I like to have one wow moment in each room that becomes a conversation starter,” she says. “And I want everything else to sort of blend in, to be a little more subtle and less high impact. It’s almost like stage decorating. I am all about setting up a scene.”

Hovering witch hats create a magical look. “They just make you smile,” Kara says. The rest of the room’s seasonal decor is subtle—a few black crows, a skull beneath a cloche, and tone-on-tone skeleton pillows.

Open shelves create opportunities for novel displays like a crow on a cake stand and pumpkins set on vintage scales. A flock of hand-cut paper bats from Etsy flies across the subway tile.

Kara sets the table with a collection of amber bottles, a subtle hint of orange in the otherwise neutral space. Black spiders tucked in the beaded chandelier are a spooky surprise. “I like things to look a little aged not cutesy,” she says.

Kara puts a Halloween spin on her cheese board with candy eyes on Oreos, a small Brie wheel cut in the shape of a coffin, and orange clementines and pumpkin candies. A pair of crows perch on the hutch. Kara cuts out paper hats and tapes them onto existing photo frames.

“I love a good surface like this to make a vignette,” Kara says of the piano in their entryway. She stretches spiderwebbing across the instrument, sets tiny skulls on the music desk, and hangs a skull print inside a window frame. It’s easy to pull the webbing back and remove the skulls to play the piano.

Styled by  Janna Lufkin