There's a specific kind of porch shame that arrives around the second week of November. The pumpkin has gone soft on one side. A cobweb decoration is hanging off a single nail because the other one gave up. And underfoot there's a doormat with a cartoon ghost on it that made sense for eleven days and now reads as "she stopped trying."
I've been making doormats since 2009 and I have watched this happen to a lot of front doors. Including mine. I made my Halloween porch ghosts out of the old coverings from my new-ish windows. They are getting pretty... sickly. It's been at least 10 years I keep putting them up!
The fix isn't less Halloween. The fix is Halloween that was never only about Halloween.
A mat that quotes Dante is a horror mat in October and a literary mat in March. Nobody coming up your steps in February thinks "she forgot to take that down." They think "oh, Dante." Same with a Kubrick carpet pattern, same with a Coraline line, same with a pentagram that predates the entire concept of a seasonal aisle at Target.
Here are seven that pass the November test. Five of them are the ones people find most often on my site, which I know because I went and checked rather than picking my favorites. Two more are in here because you keep asking me about them.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here
This is the one people find more than anything else I make in this category, and I think I know why. It's the only Halloween decoration that's also a 700-year-old poem.
Skull and bones, the line from the gate of Dante's Inferno, and a border you pick yourself. There are nine border options including one made of bones, which is the correct choice and I will not be taking questions.
In October it's a threat. The rest of the year it's the mat of someone who has read a book. $59.95.
No whistling in the house
A Coraline mat, and one of the quietest ones I make, which is the point.
If you know, you know. If you don't, you'll just think the household has a rule about whistling, which is genuinely a superstition in several countries and makes the mat read as eccentric rather than spooky. That's the whole trick. It sits in the ambiguity and lets your visitor decide how worried to be.
Never once looked like Halloween decor to anyone who hasn't seen the film. $59.95.
Welcome to Hell
Your porch has string lights, a pumpkin holding on for dear life, and a scented candle situation you're not proud of. Then there's the mat, cutting through all of it with two words.
I put this one in because it's the anti-November-shame mat in the purest form. It's not seasonal. It's a permanent statement about your household that happens to work extremely well in October. People buy it for Halloween and then never take it up, which is the highest compliment a mat gets.
Nine borders on this one too. $59.95.
I see you shiver with anticipation
Rocky Horror, in dripping letters, in black or red.
Red is the braver call and red is the one I'd make. Black reads as gothic year-round and is the safer buy if your front door is beige and your HOA has opinions.
This is a mat for a specific person, and that person already knows every word and is currently doing the hand movement. If that's not your household, skip it. If it is, you didn't need me to write this paragraph. $59.95.
The Overlook Hotel carpet
The hexagon pattern from the hallway. Orange and brown, exactly as Kubrick had it.
Here's what makes it the best November mat in the whole list: to anyone who hasn't seen the film, it's a retro geometric pattern in autumn colors. It's a mid-century rug. It's tasteful. Your mother-in-law will compliment it.
To everyone who has seen the film, you have put the Overlook hallway on your front step, and they will stand on it a fraction too long before they knock.
It's my most expensive mat at $69.95 because the pattern takes more work, and it's the one I get sent the most photos of. One customer wrote "it's so pretty I don't want to put it outside. But I will."
Devil's Trap
A demon gets halfway up your porch steps, all sulfur and swagger, and stops dead the second one boot lands on the mat.
That's the pitch. It's the Supernatural lockdown sigil, the actual one, a pentagram inside a ring of Latin nobody in your book club is going to translate. Fans of the show spot it from the sidewalk. Everyone else sees an old occult symbol and either loves it or crosses the street, and both of those are fine outcomes.
Fully year-round. There is nothing October about a ward. $59.95.
I hope you like rats
The deadpan one.
No skulls, no blood, no font that's trying to scare anybody. Just a flat statement of fact delivered at foot level to a person who is already committed to knocking. The horror is entirely in their imagination, which is where the good horror always is.
This is the mat for people who think Halloween decorations are a bit much but would still like their guests to be slightly unsettled. It works in November because it works in June.
The part that actually keeps it looking good
Design is half of it. The other half is picking a mat that survives to November in the first place.
My coir mats are natural coconut fiber, which means they're beautiful and they're divas. Coir wants a covered entry, out of direct sun and hard rain. Under a porch roof it will look great for years. Sitting in an unprotected Boston October, it will fade and go ragged by the time you'd want to swap it anyway, and then it does look stupid in November.
If your door takes weather straight on, get the all-weather recycled rubber version instead. It hoses clean, it doesn't fade, and it does not care what month it is. It's $10 to $20 more depending on the size and it's the right call more often than people think.
On sizing: medium at 18 by 30 inches is the standard and the one most people want. There's tiny at 12 by 26 for apartment doors, and it goes up through large, super-sized, and a colossal 36 by 72 inches for a double door or a very committed entryway. If you're not sure, read the doormat sizing guide before you order, because size is the thing people most often get wrong and the thing that most often ruins how a good design looks on an actual door.
All of these live in the Halloween and gothic doormats collection, along with about forty others including the ouija boards, the black cats, and several that are considerably ruder than anything on this page.
Free U.S. shipping, international from $9.99, and if you want it on the doorstep for Halloween, order it in the next two weeks rather than the last one.
Be well and enjoy wiping your feet!
Spoon
