Halloween all year long

The skull-and-crossbones symbol can be edgy and cute

If taking down your Halloween decor the moment Nov. 1 rolls around leaves you feeling bummed, you're in luck. A popular seasonal motif is being featured on a handful of design items meant to dress your house year-round. Once considered a scary symbol representing danger and violence, the skull-and-crossbones design has entered the home full time.

"The skull is something fun and playful," says Sandy Glaze, owner of Sin in Linen, a home textile company in Seattle that carries sheet sets, duvet covers, blankets and throw pillows featuring the novelty design. "People like that it shows that they are doing something a little different."

The skull-and-crossbones symbol has broad appeal. Graphic, eye-catching and easily recognizable, it's dark and menacing mixed with black; paired with pastels, it becomes sweet.

Hable Construction (http://www.hableconstruction.com) introduced its googly-eyed "silly skull" motif on cosmetics bags six years ago. The item proved so popular that the New York textile company started offering the design on Christmas stockings and throw pillows, both of which have been selling steadily. "It's a whimsical way to interpret something edgy," says co-owner Katharine Hable Sweeney. Though Hable's pillows are typically bought for a child's room, Sweeney says, adults sometimes get them for home-office chairs. "It's a little pop of something funny."

Luxury brand Leontine Linens (http://www.leontinelinens.com) introduced a Jolly Roger motif to its fall collection. "We are known for our monogram specialty, so it's a departure for us," founder Jane Scott Hodges says. "But we find it fun to fold in a motif that we think is universal. Monograms aren't for everyone."

Leontine's skull-and-crossbones applique is offered on bed linens, towels and shower curtains in about 100 colors, Hodges says. The design may traditionally be for boys, she says, but "you could also do it in hot pink for a girl. . . . If she doesn't like flowers and bows, why not this?"

And if accessories and linens still feel too temporary, there are always bathroom fixtures and wallpaper.

When Arthur Phillips, executive director for the Stark Wallcovering showroom in New York (http://www.starkwallcovering.com) first saw "Roger," a charming and child-friendly skull-and-crossbones wallpaper from the Swedish company Sandberg, he wasn't sure it would sell. "But people are responding to it in a very cute way," he says. "It's so different [and] distinctive." In the year and a half that his showroom has carried the wallpaper, Phillips says, the pink has been by far the best seller.

"You can mix it with plaids and stripes to soften it. Or do a bathroom with the pink paper and put plaid in the room," he says. "Some may do a feature wall with the skull and crossbones, then do the rest of the room with stripes or plaid or pin dots."

"As peculiar as it seems," Phillips says, "it really does work."