The Most Festive Autumn Front Porch with Fall Planters 

Last Updated on July 22, 2024

Learn how to style a pumpkin-patch worthy Autumn front porch with all the Fall feels. 

I get more excited to decorate my front porch than any room in the house! The porch (along with your yard) really helps to elevate the overall aesthetic of your home. 

Fall is by far my favorite season of the year, and I love pulling up in the driveway and seeing our festive Fall decor. I love to decorate but I also don’t like decor that’s over complicated or expensive. Read below to get tips for creating a simple but festive Autumn front porch with the most amazing Fall planters.

Discover more front porch decorating posts:
→How to Decorate Outdoor Planters for the Holidays
→The Perfect Spring Planters
→Behr Cordovan Brown Deck Refinish

How to Style a Front Porch for Fall

Creating a beautiful Autumn front porch is really easy! Below are my top 4 Fall front porch decorating essentials.

1. Fall Planters

Fall planters are the real focal point of your porch, and I think they really make the most design impact. My decorating style is coastal, so I keep that general design aesthetic even during the holidays. I found the perfect Nantucket-style waterproof planters at Home Depot a few summers ago, and I love them so much!

They’re made of polyethylene, which is lightweight, waterproof, and super easy to clean. You can literally just spray them off with a hose to clean them. I bought two 16” tall planters and one 32” planter. During the summer, they’re usually filled with flowers, but I love to get creative with them for Fall and Christmas.

I researched Pinterest for inspo but couldn’t find anyone decorating Fall themes with these, so I headed to Hobby Lobby to see what I could find. The easier the decor, the better for me. My best friend is insanely crafty, but I am definitely not! 

How to Decorate Fall Planters

When decorating Fall planters, you first need to determine how much space you’re working with. My 16” planters have a little over 11” square decorating space on top and my 32” has a little over 11”.  Measuring your “decorating space” will let you know how much decor you’ll want to buy. You do not need to fill every square inch of the planter, but you also don’t want to decorate with too little.  

My planters were already filled with dirt and mulch from my summer petunias, and I didn’t want to mess with emptying them out. So, I wanted to find decor items with attached stems, so I could just place them in the dirt and make decorating really easy. 

I found the perfect cream pumpkin, berry, pinecone, and leaf stems at Hobby Lobby that were basically like an all-in-one Fall spray. They worked amazing for these planters. You literally just stick the stem in the dirt and all the decor lays perfectly on top.

Hobby Lobby and Michaels are my go-to’s for seasonal planter decor. Just know, they switch things up every year. So, if you see something you like, buy it! It likely won’t be there next year. I linked some similar pumpkin sprays below:

Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3

Behind the pumpkin sprays, I layered in some copper-colored grass sprays that had a good amount of height and volume to them. They reminded me of something you would see growing on the side of the road during a hayride! I think they are the perfect Fall complement to the pumpkin sprays. You will find me at Hobby Lobby with a dozen different sprays and stems laid out on a table or on the floor to find the perfect combination. Mix and match different pieces to see what you like together. There are really no wrong options here – just have fun with it!

Tips:

1. Make sure your planters are filled with dirt. These stems won’t work without a base.

2. Place one shorter Fall spray stem in the front of each planter.

3. Layer in taller sprays in back. I did two grass sprays in back to help fill in the space. 

4. Fill in the planters with fresh mulch. For extra Fall feels, toss in a few pinecones. You can get these at any craft store.

5. Take a step back and look at your planters. Make any adjustments to ensure everything looks balanced. 

2. Fall Doormat

A seasonal mat is the easiest way to bring Fall vibes to your Autumn front porch. To keep my coastal style, I have a blue and white striped outdoor rug on my porch all year, but I layer in different doormats each season. I buy all of our doormats from Target because they’re super affordable and they usually have a decent selection.

For Fall, I chose a simple ‘Welcome Friends’ mat. It’s not overtly Fall-themed, but it still works great! My husband usually lets me go wild with decorating, but he draws a line at the “Happy Fall Y’all” stuff.  LOL

3. Fall Wreath

A Fall wreath is the quintessential decor item to complete your Autumn front porch. I am not even sure you can say you have a Fall front porch without your Fall wreath on the door! Target is my favorite place to shop for wreaths. This one is from Studio Mcgee, and it’s so pretty in person! I love how the light catches it and showcases the most beautiful Fall colors. 

4. Pumpkins

My husband knows when Fall rolls around, I am going to need my pumpkins for the front porch. One of them will undoubtedly become our Halloween carved pumpkin but until then, they’re porch decor. Buy a few pumpkins in different sizes.

I usually choose two large pumpkins, one medium, and a handful of smaller ones. Layer them around your Fall planters. We get them at Costco, but you can find them at Home Depot or pretty much any grocery store.

Warning: squirrels love pumpkins! I woke up on more than one occasion to squirrels eating our pumpkins and making a huge mess. But, they’re so cute, so I didn’t stay mad long. 

Halloween Front Porch

We don’t go all out with Halloween decor, but this past year my husband bought a howling skeleton wolf at Home Depot, and it’ s pretty fun! It has a motion sensor that makes the wolf howl when it detects movement. You can turn it off, so it doesn’t scare the crap out of your delivery drivers.

It was fun to turn it on for Halloween night though! The eyes also light up red, so it’s kind of creepy (in the best way!). I don’t put him out until it gets a little closer to Halloween, so our Autumn front porch stays a little more refined until then!

I reuse our Autumn front porch decor every year, so it’s really a one-time investment (unless you get sick of things!). The only thing I will refresh more often is our front door mat, because people cleaning their shoes off can wear it out over time. (and of course the real pumpkins won’t last past a month or so!)

I hope you got some good Fall front porch decorating ideas from this post. I am counting down the days until Fall is actually here, so I can stop sweating through summer. Happy Fall Y’all!

This post is about how to decorate an Autumn front porch with Fall planters.