Falls Church Businesses Halloween-Ready After Window Painting Festival

FALLS CHURCH, VA — Storefronts in downtown Falls Church are dressed in their Halloween best after children and community groups painted windows.

The annual Halloween Window Painting Festival organized by Falls Church Arts encourages children, parents and community group to contribute hand painted art to business windows. Falls Church Arts board member Marty Behr came up with the idea, leading the effort to start in 2008. The community window painting brings together hundreds of residents and visitors and draws thousands of visitors to see the displays during October, according to the arts nonprofit.

This year, about 300 volunteers braved wind and rain to paint family-friendly Halloween scenes on windows around downtown Falls Church. A record number of businesses — 40 — joined in to get their windows painted.

Residents are encouraged to walk around downtown Falls Church to see the window displays while they are up. Artists will clean up the windows between Nov. 1 and 5, but rain sometimes impacts the displays before cleanup.

Here are a few of this year's window paintings.