Hoi An Lantern Workshop: Hands-On Experience & Private Car Transfer Direct to the Workshop

Why Lanterns Became the Symbol of Hoi An

According to handicraft village records from the Hoi An City Electronic Information Portal, the Hoi An lantern-making craft has a history of over 400 years and stands as the most iconic cultural symbol of the ancient town.

What few people know is that most lanterns sold in the ancient town are handcrafted in small workshops right around the area, and nearly all of them welcome visitors inside to watch.

The Steps Involved in Making a Lantern

• Bamboo selection and treatment — bamboo must be soaked in water and sun-dried to prevent termites, a crucial step determining the lantern’s durability.
• Rib splitting and frame bending — the number of ribs determines the lantern shape: round, garlic, rice dumpling, or diamond.
• Fabric covering — silk or glossy fabric is stretched and glued over each frame section; this is the hardest step as the fabric must be evenly stretched without wrinkles.
• Decoration — painting patterns, embroidery, or leaving it plain depending on the type.

Watching artisans work makes it look fast, but beginners typically take three times longer on the fabric stretching step alone, often leaving wrinkles.

The Hands-On Lantern Making Experience

Many workshops offer short 1- to 2-hour experience classes. You are usually provided with a pre-bent frame, choose your fabric color, stretch and glue it yourself, and finally take your own lantern home. This is one of the rare activities in Hoi An where children aged 6 to 7 can participate almost entirely on their own.

If you want to learn from scratch—including splitting the bamboo and bending the frame—you must inquire in advance, as this class style takes longer and not all workshops offer it.

Top Traditional Lantern Workshops & Reputable Classes in Hoi An

Save these 4 long-standing traditional handcrafted lantern workshops that welcome visitors and host reputable lantern-making workshops:

1. Ha Linh Lantern Workshop

• Address: 72 Tran Nhan Tong, Cam Chau Ward, Hoi An.
• Highlights: One of Hoi An’s largest export-scale lantern production workshops, featuring a spacious campus with live demonstrations of bamboo splitting, frame bending, and silk covering.
• Workshop cost: 100,000 VND - 150,000 VND / person (Includes a collapsible lantern to take home as a gift).

2. Artisan Huynh Van Ba Lantern Workshop

• Address: 54 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Minh An Ward (right next to the Japanese Covered Bridge).
• Highlights: Artisan Huynh Van Ba is the master who restored and innovated today’s modern collapsible-frame lantern. Here you can admire unique traditional lantern shapes: rotating military lanterns, diamond lanterns, and pentagonal UFO lanterns.
• Workshop cost: 120,000 VND - 180,000 VND / person.

3. Hoi an Silk Village Lantern Workshop

• Address: 28 Nguyen Tat Thanh, Tan An Ward, Hoi An.
• Highlights: Combines a tour of traditional sericulture and silk weaving processes with the hands-on experience of covering lanterns using high-grade natural silk woven on-site by artisans.
• Workshop cost: 150,000 VND - 200,000 VND / person.

4. The Lantern Lady Workshop

• Address: 130 Tran Cao Van, Minh An Ward, Hoi An.
• Highlights: A cozy, family-style workshop space with fluent English-speaking instructors who meticulously guide every step of fabric pasting and calligraphy pattern painting on the lantern surface.
• Workshop cost: 100,000 VND - 140,000 VND / guest.

Buying Lanterns to Take Home: Remember to Ask for Collapsible Types

The most common mistake is buying a fully stretched rigid lantern and struggling to figure out how to squeeze it into a suitcase. Most workshops offer collapsible frames—unhooking the retainer collapses the lantern until it is as thin as a paper fan, and it pops right back open when you get home.

If buying many as gifts, ask the workshop directly which ones are collapsible and how to pop them back open correctly without snapping the bamboo ribs.

Combining a Lantern Workshop With an Evening of Releasing Flower Lanterns

The most sensible itinerary is to visit the workshop in the late afternoon, finish your lantern just as night falls, walk out to the Hoai River to release flower lanterns, and admire the illuminated ancient town. You gain an understanding of how the lantern is made while seeing it in its true context.

For travelers coming from Da Nang, this is the kind of itinerary where missing the return ride is most common due to late finishes. Review the two-way car pricing table and then book a car from Da Nang to Hoi An with a scheduled pickup time for the safest journey. To discover what else the ancient town offers at night, explore our guide on the Hoi An Lantern Festival and evening boat rides on the Hoai River.