# how do you light your haunt?



## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

I know it's been asked before but Id really like to get some clarity on what works best and what you use, maybe to generate some ideas for myself. Like what bulbs you use. What type of holders for the lights and where you buy from. Thanks friends! Oh and pics of great examples of your lighting would be cool too!


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## Troll Wizard (May 3, 2012)

WOW! There is so much to choose from. I think it would be good to know what you are planning on doing for your haunt and then planning it from there on what type of lighting you would need, and how much.

I would show you some pics, but I recently upgraded my computer, and for some reason I was able to backup everything except my pictures. It had all of my Halloween pics on them from when I started years ago. I know they are in there somewhere, I just can't find them for some unknown reason. So I will keep looking.

I would like to post a picture of myself in costume as the Troll Wizard. So until I find them.


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## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

The lighting used varies from prop to prop, scene to scene, availability of power where the light needs to be, where the prop or scene will be (indoors or out doors, dry or wet environment) how it will be used, cost, what kind of durability/abuse will it need to face in use and handling, etc.


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## jdubbya (Nov 6, 2005)

We use simple 100 watt flood lights. Mostly blue and some amber. I think we have 3 blue and two amber total for our small yard.


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## Spooky1 (Aug 25, 2008)

For the most part I've switched from flood lights to the colored florescent bulbs (blue, red and amber in the background) in clamp lights. I just paint the exterior of the clamp light black so they're not too noticeable. The florescent bulb actually run brighter than the flood lights. I may look for a way to dim them just a bit.


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## RandalB (Jun 8, 2009)

1w LED spotlights, amber, red, green, blue

I've also used mini tiki torches with chemical additives to change the flame color the past 2 years with good results...

RandalB


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## Daphne (Oct 18, 2006)

I started with 4 foot black lights until the year I got rained out and had to pull all the lights in and no one thought I was running my haunt. Fluorescents only allowed me to light it a couple nights due to moisture/dew/risk of rain. I upgraded to LED's so I could have it lit up for the whole month. They are more economical (not to purchase, running costs are more economical) and are considerably more effective as well as cool to the touch. My witch has a standard green spot from Home Depot and it gets super hot and I manage to get burned every year.

I got my LED's from Minion's Web. I use blue (they are super bright) for the cemetery and mostly red/purple/orange for spot lighting various props. The UV ones are great for the jack-o-lanterns/spiders and heavily webbed area that needs more subtle lighting. Be aware they don't all light the same intensity-wise. Purples are really faint and blues were really bright so be sure and check out the test shots.

Skull and Crossbones has a terrific lighting tutorial although I can't find the link at the moment.

Street lights and ambient lights will have a significant effect as well.


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

Cool thanks everyone. I will probably by some and test it out first. Feel free to post pics. I love seeing everyone's displays and lighting My


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

There is a link on this site to a PDF for the Skull and Bone lighting tutorial that Daphne mentioned:

http://www.robertdbrown.com/haunt/


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## stagehand1975 (Feb 22, 2010)

At the new haunt I am helping with this year, we using mostly leds to light it up. As mentioned above. Certain props and scenes may need special attention and lighting. Incandescent flood lights as mentioned above get really hot and tend to give off some light polution. They work best in a parcially enclosed fixture. Cfl bulbs are great as well. They don't get as hot and have a richer color to them. Cfl bulbs and leds are great for haveing rich colors with no light polution. Leds produce almost no heat. Leds are cheap if you build the fixtures yourself. Maybe a couple bucks or less for each fixture. When planning your lighting. Think layers, highlight what you want people to see, have a different color background, and.then.light other details differently. You don't want.to light the whole city, its not Christmas. Remember, darkness is part of.the illusion.


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## R. Lamb (Oct 11, 2011)

My yard haunt is not all that big in size but it does take up two sides of my house. I live on a corner lot. I found that LED par cans, mini Pars, and pin spots are well worth the investment. I some times buy them new from the local Guitar Center type store but I also get them from craigslist and e-bay. seems that there are a lot of DJ's out there that are getting out of the trade. The LED pars run cool, don't require filters and I can run many more of them at a time as they don't suck up the electricity, witch is important in this old house


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## wandererrob (Aug 8, 2007)

My lighting has gone through stages. The first year I used a few thrown together incandescent lights with gels and a smattering of battery power LED spotlights I made.

The next few years I used floodlight stakes (you know the green ones from the Christmas aisle at Home Depot) that I covered with sections of PVC that were painted black and capped with gels for color. I ran CFL bulbs in all of them.

http://www.garageofevilnetwork.com/photo/2243951:Photo:16988?context=user (this was the test rig before painting)

It worked well but posed some hazards. Namely, I have two large, active dogs one of which is prone to crashing into/through things. This led to shattered CFLs in my yard. Both an environmental hazard and a safety issue. I also really wanted to minimize the use of 110V throughout the yard.

This led to me switching over almost entirely to LEDs last year. But being a cheap bastid, I decided to play around with some cheap but bright LED flashlights. I modified them to run on hardwired power at 3.3V (courtesy of a computer power supply in the shed. They cost me about $3 each and worked very well. I also built a few 3W LED lights form scratch, sourcing the LEDs and drivers from eBay.

http://www.garageofevilnetwork.com/photo/img-4833?context=user (here they are all drilled and wired for central power)

I was so happy with the home made ones that I've redesigned them and they will now begin phasing out the flashlights as the main lighting. The flashlights will get used for accent lighting.

And these will be this year's (and future year's) main lighting.

http://www.garageofevilnetwork.com/photo/albums/led-lighting-v2-0

And just for chuckles, because this post isn't long enough yet, here's a quick progression of the lighting in it's various phases.

Beginning: 
http://www.garageofevilnetwork.com/...811?context=album&albumId=2243951:Album:11289

Middle years: 
http://www.garageofevilnetwork.com/photo/img0505-1?context=user

Last year: 
http://www.garageofevilnetwork.com/photo/the-entombed-gravestone-in-action-off?context=user

http://www.garageofevilnetwork.com/photo/dsc-0721?context=user

I'm pretty happy with the blue wash and ditching the layers of colors, it felt a bit distracting. Now I'll begin to play around more with accent lighting to add depth. I need to work on enhancing the scene without disrupting the overall scene.

OK, I'll shut up now.


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## jaege (Aug 23, 2009)

I use 20-30 homemade LED spots (blue and green mostly with a few yellow, purple and "black") ala niblique (the tutorial is on this site), flicker bulbs in jack-o-lanterns, faux candles, and coach lights on my columns, and two 4 foot tube black lights to make my FCG glow. Oh and I have green compact flourescents in the two house lights next to my front door.


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## Phil (Sep 2, 2007)

We are about to experiment with converting a 9 LED Harbor Freight flashlight for haunt lighting. Received one as a gift in an order, and they went on sale for $1 each so we bought 30 (ugh). They run three 1.5VDC cells so we will experiment with running 5V or 3.3V from a PC power supply. Hoping to avoid adding resistors.
Plan is to use the dowel technique for hard-wiring (an old Jaybo post I think?). Will probably bypass the switch as it seems to be the real weak point of the design.


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## CoolDJTV (Jun 28, 2011)

What I like to do with lighting is shine it up on my house, blues reds a greens (chose one) look good on the house and make it look creepy for cheep...


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Guess I use a curious mix having all sorts of homemade flickering LED's...in pumpkins, 'pillar candles' taper candles, candelabras, etc. Have several real candles scattered about, blacklights, orange neon flicker bulbs to give a 'campy' glow, green plasma plates, orange/violet strand lights, red/blue strobe lights and probably some other things I've forgotten [like lasers, and does glow paint count as lighting?!?].

Vid and pics are in sig.


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## Sawtooth Jack (Apr 9, 2011)

I just started lighting last year—outside of the horrible strobe I've been using forever—and I made some simple LED spotlights that did wonders for highlighting key areas of my haunt. I used Allen H's tutorial for their construction. This year I am supplementing with a couple of large spotlights in green, amber and purple. I really dig the blue and red look, but thought I'd try these colors first...just seem more organic and go with my LEDs from last year. Hopefully this year I'll finally have some pics with decent lighting.


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## debbie5 (Mar 2, 2007)

I could really use a Lighting Glossary For Dummies...


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## Lunatic (Oct 3, 2006)

I use green incandescent floods staked into the ground and fl black lights. I intend to replace some of the floods with colored LED's or CFL's to control over-lighting and be more energy efficient. I have been inspired by many members with their great lighting techniques. Thanks for that!


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## Zurgh (Dec 21, 2009)

I don't light up my front yard display in any 'haunter' styled method.
Most real graveyards don't have feature & accent lighting

The neighborhood street lights cast a dim harsh light, I light up my yard & walkway with similarly harsh, yet normal lighting... not spotlighting anything in particular, just spreading this harsh glare around. Keeping the lighting harsh yet normal sets em up for what comes next... 

In my courtyard, I run the harsh lights, too... That is until they trigger the motion sensor that triggers the relays to kill the 'normal' courtyard lighting... 

For a just a breef moment they are blind, the harsh light was very bright... I have successfully taken away there sight... if only for a moment...

In this moment of temporary blindness, 2 things occur

1,very dim up-lights and some dim led string lights come on to showcase any props as there eyes struggle to adjust...

and 2,an electromagnet drops a bucket loudly crashing to the ground...


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## nixie (Sep 17, 2008)

Debbie, I could use that glossary too!


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## Daphne (Oct 18, 2006)

Zurgh, How many damp spots do you find on the ground after you cause all the ToTs to wet their pants? The lights going out and a bucket crashing would totally freak me out. All you need is a shrill scream and they would be running for the hills whether they could see or not!

I had no idea my display had caused damp clothing until people came up the following year while I was decorating and shared it with me. How embarrassing for both them and us for causing it.

The hardest thing on lighting for me was the street lights on either side. They wrecked my Portal to the Underworld prop illusion and I still have no solution for it after 2 years of trying everything.

The Skull and Crossbones tutorial addresses several of the problems we were having though.

Also, we were trying to use one color of light for everything. Now, we use the bright blue LEDs for the cemetery, the UV LEDs for the jack-o-lantern patch and red/orange/green or purple spots for props we want to "separate" from the general lighting. It is more visually interesting as well. 

We have 2 big bats flying (suspended from Spider Wire but wind moves them so at any given time they are in different spots) and we shoot red LED's (inside flower pots and behind tombstones) straight up to light them from underneath. It looks really cool. You also have to move them every night for night lighting so the red lights are actually hitting them.

Something that is super important though is try to hide the lights from the patrons. You do not want visitors to see the lighting, it messes up the effect especially if it is shining in their eyes.


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