The best Halloween archways, and the dimension none of them publishes

How we ranked these

Published height first, because it is the only dimension the category commits to. Then whether built-in lighting is stated, since an unlit arch at trick-or-treat hour is a shape in the dark. Then theme, which decides how long it can stay up. Anchoring hardware and blower ratings are unpublished across the board, so they are a caution rather than a ranking factor.

The dimension to work out yourself

An arch is the only inflatable with a job that depends on a horizontal dimension. A ghost stands beside a path; an arch has to stand over one, with its legs outside the walking surface and the people who use it passing between them.

That is the single most useful check before buying. A narrow path between a wall and a hedge, or a walk that runs tight along the front of the house, often has no room for the legs at all. In that case the right purchase is a standing figure beside the path rather than an arch over it — the field is on Halloween inflatables, and the small-space version of the whole problem is on Halloween on a small porch.

Height, and what it has to clear

An inflatable arch needs its full published height in clear vertical space. There is no partial inflation: it either stands up or it leans against whatever is above it.

The three things that catch people are a low tree branch over the path, a porch roof or portico, and a utility drop to the house. Measure the lowest obstruction over the spot and compare it against the published height, not against the arch in the photograph. At 8 feet almost any front garden works; at 12.5 feet you need open sky.

Height also sets what the arch does to the house. If the arch is taller than your eave line, it becomes the tallest thing on the front of the property and everything else reads as small beside it. That is a legitimate choice for a drive-by display and the wrong one if the rest of the yard is tombstones and a fog machine at ground level. The scaling argument is on the best outdoor Halloween decorations.

Anchoring, which no listing here publishes

Not one arch on this page states what it ships with for stakes or tethers, and an arch is the worst-shaped inflatable in wind: it presents a broad vertical face with a hole through the middle, and a late-October gust goes through and against it in turn.

Assume the supplied hardware is the minimum rather than the plan. The anchoring method that actually keeps an inflatable standing — ground stakes at the corners, tethers at opposing angles, and sandbags where the surface will not take a stake — is set out on anchoring an inflatable so it is still standing in the morning. It applies to a Halloween arch exactly as it does to a Christmas one.

Arch, figure, or a lit frame

Three products do similar work at an entrance and they are not interchangeable.

An inflatable arch is cheap per foot of height, fills a frontage, and deflates to a bag — and it needs a running blower, open sky and ground either side of the walk. A standing figure needs none of the span and works beside a narrow path; the heights and the anchoring are on Halloween inflatables. A rigid lit arch — a metal or tinsel frame with lights on it — needs no power beyond the lights and stands in weather an inflatable cannot, at a fraction of the height; the Christmas versions are on Christmas light arches and a plain one works over a Halloween walk just as well.

The general version of this trade — height for an evening against a shape that keeps it — is on inflatables or lighted figures, and the Halloween-specific first-purchase question on projector or inflatable.

Theme is what decides how long it can stay up

An arch is the largest single item in most Halloween displays, which makes putting it up and taking it down a job. The two 10 ft arches here answer that differently: the reaper and bat panels are Halloween and nothing else, while the ghost, cat and cornucopia arch reads as general autumn and can reasonably go up in the first week of October and stay until the clocks change.

If the household is running one continuous autumn scheme rather than two separate ones, that is worth more than the design difference. The handover calendar is on when to put Halloween decorations up, and when to take them down, and the family-friendly consideration — which matters with a reaper arch on a street full of small children — on decorations small children will still walk up to.