Chinese Lanterns: Hanging, Floating, Flying, and More

There is a scene that turns up again and again in Chinese period dramas. Two people stand beside a river at night. One writes a wish in large brush strokes on a paper lantern. They hold it together for a moment, then let it go and watch it rise into the dark.

I know that scene from TVB costume dramas and mainland historical series. It always looked impossibly romantic: the handwriting, the warm light, the feeling that a private hope had suddenly become visible. I wanted to do it myself long before I knew what the lantern was called.

The lantern in those dramas is a sky lantern, and it is not the same thing as the round red lanterns hanging outside a Chinese restaurant. A floating water lantern can give you almost the same wish-making moment at home. A pair of red hanging lanterns can make your front door look as if something good is about to happen.

Three different products, three different traditions. Buy the wrong one and it may still look beautiful, but it creates a completely different mood.

If you are only here to buy one, skip straight to the lanterns I recommend.

Which Chinese Lantern Should You Buy?

The fastest way to choose is to start with the picture you want at the end.

My strongest recommendation is simple: buy two red lanterns for the door and a floating set for the moment you actually want to remember. One decorates the house. The other gives everyone something to do.

What Are Chinese Lanterns?

A Chinese lantern is a light source covered by a translucent shell, usually paper, silk, fabric, or plastic stretched over a frame. That definition is accurate but not very helpful, because English puts several unrelated objects under one name.

What Are Chinese Lanterns Called?

The general Mandarin word is denglong (灯笼, lantern). These are the words you are most likely to see when you start searching:

Palace lantern (宫灯, gōngdēng) is the traditional decorative lantern associated with palaces, festivals, entrances, and formal celebrations. Modern red hanging lanterns are sometimes sold under this broad category even when they are not handmade palace lanterns.

Sky lantern (天灯, tiāndēng) is the flying paper lantern. You may also see Kongming lantern (孔明灯, Kǒngmíng dēng), a name traditionally connected with the strategist Zhuge Liang.

River lantern (河灯, hédēng) and water lantern (水灯, shuǐdēng) are names for the floating version. It may be used for a wish, a celebration, or a memorial depending on the place and occasion.

What Do Chinese Lanterns Mean?

Red is the color that carries the most immediate meaning. It is linked with celebration, warmth, good fortune, and hopes for a prosperous year. That is why red appears on lanterns, red envelopes, wedding decorations, and the paper couplets pasted around a doorway during Lunar New Year.

There is also a piece of Chinese wordplay behind some lantern customs. The character for lamp (灯, dēng) sounds close to ding (丁), a character associated in traditional expressions with adding a son to the family — the pun is strongest in southern dialects, where the two are near-homophones.

White is widely associated with mourning in traditional Chinese funeral customs. White paper lanterns can look elegant in a Western party setting, but if you are decorating for Lunar New Year, a Chinese wedding, or a home where Chinese guests will be present, red is the thoughtful choice.

Customs vary by region, generation, and family, and plenty of people will not react at all. But red is almost impossible to misread in a festive setting, which is why it is the low-risk choice. If you are giving a lantern rather than hanging it yourself, the taboos around Chinese gifts are worth a look first.

What Are Chinese Lanterns Used For?

Lanterns mark a moment. Sometimes the moment is loud and public; sometimes it is private.

Lunar New Year and the Lantern Festival. Red lanterns appear on doorways, balconies, shopfronts, and streets during the Spring Festival season. The Lantern Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and closes the season with displays, lantern riddles, and tangyuan, the sweet glutinous rice balls.

Mid-Autumn Festival. Children may carry lanterns and families may hang them at home, but the mood at the Mid-Autumn Festival is more nostalgic than the energetic red-and-gold feeling of Lunar New Year.

Weddings and new babies. Red lanterns make a wedding entrance look instantly festive. In some communities, lantern symbolism also appears around births and family celebrations.

Restaurants and stores. The red lantern has become a visual shorthand for a Chinese restaurant or business. It may be cultural decoration, branding, or simply a familiar sign that this is a place serving Chinese food.

Memorials. Floating lanterns can be associated with remembrance and the dead, including in some regional Hungry Ghost Festival traditions. The meaning depends heavily on the local tradition, so it is worth asking before copying a ritual you have only seen in a photograph.

Everyday decoration. Outside China, this is now one of the biggest uses. People hang them for a birthday, dinner party, wedding, garden gathering, or because a room needs more warmth.

Traditional Chinese Lanterns

Ancient Chinese Lanterns

Early lanterns were practical objects: a frame of bamboo or wood, a cover of silk or oiled paper, and a flame protected from the wind. Accounts commonly connect festival lantern lighting with the Han dynasty court and Buddhist practice on the fifteenth night of the first lunar month. There is no single, settled origin story, and different traditions are usually presented side by side.

By the Tang and Song periods, lantern displays had become large public entertainments. Historical accounts describe crowds staying out at night to see the lights. That is the version many people picture: not a quiet lamp, but a city that stayed awake.

Hanging Chinese Lanterns

The round hanging lantern is the workhorse: usually red, slightly oval, and finished with gold trim and a tassel. Many modern versions have a collapsible wire frame and a fabric or paper shell, so they fold flat and disappear into a cupboard for most of the year.

If you are decorating an entrance, buy two. A pair on either side of a door looks balanced, photographs better, and feels closer to the way lanterns are used in festive settings. One lantern can work over a table or in a small apartment, but a lone globe above a doorway often looks accidental.

For a porch or balcony, look for nylon or another weather-resistant shell. For an indoor dinner, paper gives a softer and more delicate look. Do not assume that a lantern sold as decoration includes a light or is safe for an incandescent bulb. Cool-to-touch, battery-powered LED lights are the sensible option.

Floating Chinese Lanterns

A floating lantern has a paper shade, a small wooden base, and a candle or LED light sitting in the middle. You place it on still water and let it drift.

For anyone who came to me with the drama scene in their head, I would choose this version. It keeps the most important part: lighting something together and watching it leave your hands. It simply travels across the water instead of up into the sky.

At home, it works in a pool, a large basin, or a pond.

Flying Chinese Lanterns

A sky lantern is a small hot-air balloon made from a paper envelope, a frame, and a fuel cell. The flame heats the air until the lantern rises.

That is the magic and the problem. Once it leaves your hand, you cannot steer it, recall it, or know exactly where it will land.

If you want this experience, look for a permitted, organized event rather than planning a backyard release. Pingxi District in New Taipei City is the famous example. Dates and release locations shift from year to year, so check the official schedule before booking anything.

For a home celebration, use floating lanterns or LED lanterns. You keep the wish, the photograph, and the atmosphere. You also keep control of the flame.

Are Chinese Lanterns Legal?

Short answer: sky lanterns are illegal in many parts of the United States. The International Fire Code prohibits untethered releases wherever that rule has been adopted. State and local authorities may impose stricter limits, and a current burn ban can add another restriction. Hanging lanterns and floating water lanterns are not restricted in the same way, though some parks and councils have their own rules about lighting anything on public water.

A store may sell you a pack without asking where you live. That is not permission. Check with your local fire authority before you buy. Sky lanterns can land on dry grass, trees, or roofs while the fuel source is still burning, which is why I would not use one for a backyard release.

What Are Chinese Lanterns Made Of?

Traditional lanterns used bamboo, wood, silk, oiled paper, or wheat straw. The frame was shaped first, then covered with a translucent material and decorated with paint, embroidery, calligraphy, or paper cutwork.

Modern lanterns may use nylon, polyester, pleated paper, plastic, steel wire, or lightweight wood. Material matters less than where you intend to use the lantern and whether you want to store it for another year.

The cheapest material is not automatically the wrong one. A fold-flat nylon lantern can be more useful than an expensive silk lantern if you want to fold it away and reuse it every year. The right material depends on whether you want a keepsake, a party decoration, or something that can survive a damp evening.

Where to Buy Chinese Lanterns

You can buy Chinese lanterns from a Chinatown shop, an Asian supermarket, a specialty importer, or Amazon. A local shop is ideal if you want to inspect the color, frame, tassels, and characters in person. Amazon is more convenient when you need a complete set before the festival or want a particular size.

Best for a Display: Six Red Paper Lanterns

The BEISHIDA 8-Inch Red Paper Lanterns come in a pack of six. That is enough to create a noticeable display without turning your living room into an event venue. Hang two near the entrance and group the remaining four over a table, beside a window, or in one corner of the room. Keeping them together makes the color look richer than scattering them across several rooms. The lanterns arrive flat with frames for hanging and can be folded away after the celebration. Lights are not included, so use only a mini LED light designed for paper lanterns if you want them to glow.

Choose this set if you want something festive but do not need twenty lanterns.

Best for Filling a Room: Twenty Red Lanterns

For a larger Lunar New Year party, wedding, restaurant, or community event, I would choose the Favide 20-Piece Red Chinese Lantern Set. Every lantern is 10 inches wide, which makes the set easier to arrange than a box containing many tiny sizes. Twenty lanterns can fill a dining room, frame a party backdrop, or continue from the entrance into the main gathering space. The honeycomb lanterns open and close rather than using the familiar round wire frame. The material is thickened and waterproof, but I would still bring them inside after the event instead of treating decorative lanterns as permanent outdoor fixtures.

Buy this pack when you want the room to look transformed, not merely decorated.

Best for a Shared Water Ritual: Floating Water Lanterns

The 20-Pack of Diagtree Floating Water Lanterns turns a dinner or gathering into a shared moment. Twenty is a useful quantity for a family New Year gathering, birthday, wedding, or private memorial. Give everyone a lantern, light them together, and release them at the same time. The silence afterward does some of the work. Each 5.9-inch paper lantern includes a tea light and an adhesive pad. Use them only where flames and floating decorations are permitted.

I would choose this set for the person who says, “I do not just want decorations. I want us to do something.”

How to Make Chinese Lanterns

This tutorial shows how to turn simple red and yellow paper into several Chinese lantern designs, including a version you can hang as a garland:

You need:

• Red and yellow construction paper
• Scissors
• A ruler and pencil
• A glue stick or stapler
• Thread or string for the garland

If you are making several lanterns, the Crayola Construction Paper Bulk Pack gives you red, yellow, and eight other colors to experiment with. The 9-by-12-inch sheets are a practical size for the designs in the video, and the larger pack makes more sense for a classroom, a family craft afternoon, or a long garland than buying separate packs of every color.

The hanging versions in the tutorial work best as decorations on their own, and a homemade paper lantern should never be hung with a real candle inside it.

Chinese Lanterns Festival

The Lantern Festival (元宵节, yuánxiāojié) falls on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. In 2027, it falls on February 20, following Lunar New Year on February 6.

The night is associated with lantern displays, riddles, and bowls of sweet glutinous rice balls. Tangyuan are generally made by wrapping dough around a filling. Yuanxiao are rolled in moistened glutinous rice flour until a coating builds up. The regional picture is more mixed than a strict north-south rule, but the different methods produce noticeably different textures. Their round shape, like the full moon, is associated with reunion.

The activity is called guessing lantern riddles (猜灯谜, cāi dēngmí). It is my favorite part because it turns decoration into a game: you do not just look at the lantern, you stop and try to solve it.

The lanterns you see at large touring festivals are often something else again. Zigong in Sichuan is known for enormous illuminated installations made with steel frames, fabric, and thousands of lights. They are spectacular, but they are not the same object as the small red globe above a front door.

Read more: Chinese Holidays You Need to Know

Choose the Moment You Want to Create

The lantern from the movies may be the one that first caught your attention. For a real evening with people you love, however, I would choose something you can light together and watch drift across calm, contained water.

Hang red lanterns by the door if you want the celebration to begin before anyone steps inside.

If this saved you from buying the wrong lantern, pass it on.

And if you want more of this — festivals, language, food, work life, the small things that never make it into guidebooks — the newsletter signup is in the sidebar. There is plenty more in Chinese Culture while you wait for the next one.