Planning a Glow Party Without Buying a Skipful of Plastic

Glow parties are one of the few themes that work equally well at six and at sixteen, because the effect does the decorating for you. They also generate an extraordinary amount of single-use tat if you shop the theme rather than plan it. A room, a few light sources and one activity table will beat a trolley of bracelets that die before the cake.

Start with the room, not the shopping

Everything depends on darkness you can control. A room with heavy curtains, a door that closes and one lamp you can dim will carry a glow theme; a bright conservatory in June will not, whatever you buy. Check this first, at the time of day the party will actually happen.

Three kinds of glow, and they behave differently

Ultraviolet lamps make fluorescent paper, white shirts and highlighter pens light up but leave everything else dead. Glow sticks work by a chemical reaction, are bright for a few hours and are then rubbish. Battery-lit toys and lamps are the only category that survives the party, which is why they are worth the money and the others are not.

One activity table beats twenty party bags

Set a table with a couple of light boards, a stack of black sheets and a tray of pegs, and it will hold a queue of children for the whole afternoon. Lite-Brite shows the current boards if you are considering one as the centrepiece rather than as another disposable prop. Put the table where the room is darkest and keep a lamp on nearby so nobody is fumbling in the dark.

What to buy and what to skip

• Worth it: one or two battery light toys that stay in the family afterwards.
• Worth it: black card, white and fluorescent pens, and cheap UV torches.
• Skip: bulk glow bracelets, which snap, leak and last one evening.
• Skip: themed paper plates, which nobody looks at in a dark room.
• Skip: anything battery powered and sealed shut, since it becomes waste when the cell dies.

Small-parts management with a crowd

Pegs are small, and a room full of excited children in low light is exactly the situation in which they end up on the floor and in mouths. Use trays with raised edges, keep the activity table away from where toddlers roam, and count the trays back in at the end. If younger siblings will be circulating, put the peg activity in a separate room entirely.

Lighting the food and the faces

Total darkness is a mistake at any age: children trip, drinks go over and parents get twitchy. Keep the eating area at normal light and reserve the dark for the activity corner. A couple of lamps with warm bulbs at floor level give atmosphere without blinding anyone.

The morning after

Judge the party by what is still in the house a week later. If it is a bin bag of snapped plastic and a stain on the carpet, the theme was bought rather than planned. If it is one light toy that a child is still using in October, the same money did considerably more work.