How to Make a Flower Wall
Believe it or not, building a reusable floral backdrop is super straightforward. If you’re handy, you probably don’t even need this article.
But if you’ve never built anything before and the idea is stressing you out, don’t run for the hills just yet: You can totally handle this!
To make a flower wall and professional floral backdrop—one that folds easily in half for storage—all you need are the handful of materials and tools listed here.
Materials Needed to Make a Flower Wall
These are a few basic supplies you’ll need to create your flower wall. They can be easily found at your local hardware store, while the boxwood panels can be sourced online.
Two sheets of 80 in x 40 in plywood
Three 3–5 inch door hinges (look for “corner security” or “butt” hinges)
Enough ½–¾ inch screws (depending on plywood thickness) to secure all the hinges
Four 40 in x 40 in faux boxwood panels
Loose flowers or pre-made swags for embellishing
Tools Required to Create a Floral Backdrop
These are the tools I recommend using to build the flower wall, but you may have other items on hand that can get the job done.
Power drill fitted with a screwdriver bit
Staple gun
Scissors
Floral snips
Step 1: Collect What You Need for Your Project
First, order your faux boxwood panels (available on Amazon, typically for about $45 per 40in x 40in square panel—the ones I use have a plastic grid on the back and an impressively realistic carpet of tiny leaves on the front).
While you wait for them to arrive, purchase your plywood, hinges, screws, and some staples for your staple gun if needed.
If you need help demystifying what kind of plywood to purchase, read the next section. If not, skip on down!
Tips on Selecting The Wood for Your Flower Wall
Plywood comes in many different grades and typically will be found in 4 ft x 8 ft sheets which can cost anywhere from $18 to upwards of $50. You should determine the quality of wood you need based on the following:
How elevated you want the finished product to look
The number of times it will be reused and transported
If you plan on using the flower wall often in outdoor settings
Your storage location for the piece when it’s not in use—is it climate controlled?
Your neighborhood big box hardware stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot can cut wood to size for you onsite, which is great if you don’t own or have access to an appropriate saw. They don’t typically charge for this service, so take a moment when you’re in the store to have your boards cut down to 80 in x 40 in dimensions (or whatever will best accommodate your boxwood panels).
Step 2: Assemble the Flower Wall
Lay your two plywood boards side by side (with the long sides adjacent) on the floor so that they are just about flush with each other. Align one of the hinges in the middle, one a few inches from the top, and one a few inches from the bottom.
Use your drill and screws to fasten each hinge in place. You should then be able to fold both boards toward you as if you were closing a giant book.
Once you’re sure the backdrop folds properly, go ahead and flip the whole thing over so that the hinges are facing the ground and you’re looking at the back side. If your plywood was only a half-inch thick and your screws were a little longer, you might see the tips poking through the back of the board a bit. This is okay since they’ll be covered by the spongy boxwood panels. If they stick through more than half an inch though, it’s best to trim them down using wire snips to prevent any accidental contact. Safety first!
Next, unroll your faux boxwood squares and arrange them so that they cover the back of the structure. Each board should accommodate two panels perfectly, and the panels will disguise the crack running down the middle where the hinges attached the boards. Magic!
Use your staple gun to affix all the panels to the boards. Stand the whole thing up to check for any sagging or peeling places, and use your scissors to carefully trim away any spots where the boxwood sheet overhangs the plywood by more than one inch.
If the idea of making your own flower wall backdrop seems too overwhelming—or if you need one that holds Oasis foam (wet or dry)—you can purchase a structure that is pre-made.
Step 3: Add the Flowers to Your Floral Backdrop
The final step is to attach your florals! There are as many options for how to do that as your creative brain can generate, but I’ll share a few tactics to get you started.
One tactic is to leave your stems long when you process your flowers, and then using the net-like structure of the boxwood panel design to your advantage, punching loose flowers into the boxwood backing as if you were threading the stems into a chicken wire structure in a vase! It’s a remarkably secure mechanic, although it does take some work to pull all the flowers out at the end of the event, so be ready for that.
For flowers and foliage that last out of water, check out this go-to floral resource.
Another option is to make either separate garlands or chicken wire structures full of florals and then staple them or wire them onto the backdrop after they are complete. You’ll just have to make sure you devise a way to secure the floral components all the way through to the wood (staple guns for the win here, once again). That way, you don’t end up with a heavy floral mechanism pulling the boxwood netting away from the wood backing.
Step 4: Set Up the Backdrop—and Let People Fall in Love with It
To display your flower wall for a wedding backdrop (or any event!), simply lean the two-panel structure lightly against a wall. If you need it to stand upright independently, you can construct some basic triangular trusses which can be attached to the back outer edge of each board via a nut-and-bolt system.
You’ll need to drill some holes in the plywood to add trusses, but they’re easily disguised by the boxwood layer—and they still make for an uncomplicated assembly/disassembly option if you need to be able to pack the whole thing up and lay the pieces flat after an event.
Step 5: Cost of a Flower Wall—Determine a Going Rental Rate
Whatever price you settle on, it should be reflective of the cost and quality of the building materials, the time and labor you put into construction, and the sophistication of the final product. Your client should be willing to pay you a fair price in exchange for a large piece—large installations like this require more resources (and thus incur more cost) than, say, floral swags you might provide for an already existing structure.
What Should You Charge Clients?
Since you’re generating the structure from scratch, be sure to acknowledge and communicate that it will come with a higher price tag to stay honest with your clients and fair to yourself!
For a structure like this, $350 is a reasonable starting charge (before floral embellishments), but use your own discretion and knowledge of your particular market to charge a baseline that is higher or lower.
You should, of course, calculate the price of your embellishments to the backdrop independently of the structural cost, based on what you paid at the wholesaler for the flowers you use.
These photos showcase about $100 worth of flowers at-cost (notice we used roses, which are naturally more expensive than other options), so I would personally charge $300 for those embellishments, putting the final price for the whole finished product somewhere around $650. For a more lush version or one that uses specialty blooms, the price would continue to climb. Consequently, for a less full version, the price would drop.
Go beyond building a flower wall. Learn even more advanced flower techniques in our Arbors & Ceremony online floral design class. And if you need pricing help, our online class that covers how to price for floral work will teach you to be profitable for the long haul.
What If You Rent Out Your Flower Wall or Use Silk Flowers?
As far as renting your structure out for subsequent events (if you didn’t sell it outright to the original client), it’s perfectly respectable to charge the original construction fee along with the price of the new flowers every time you lease it out.
Because you’ll obviously have to replace the flowers for each event if you use live ones, you’ll be continually investing work and TLC into this piece you’ve created (not to mention the transport, setup, and teardown factors).
Even if you solely use silk flowers, you’ll most likely be swapping out colors and textures. Don’t be afraid to let that baseline $350 (or whatever you determined) be the go-to charge for your flower wall rental. It’s always a smart business move to make something “pay for itself,” and it's all the more resourceful if it does so several times over. That’s money you can be investing back into your business! (Like, maybe it’s time to buy that staple gun instead of always borrowing it…).
That said, if a client simply doesn’t have at least $300–500 worth of budget to put toward a backdrop of this nature, consider suggesting a more economical alternative, such as hanging a few garlands in such a way as to frame some space against a blank wall.
Have Fun Creating Different Floral Backdrop Themes
This flower wall is an endlessly customizable prop, so if you’re inspired to create a variation, go for it! Some alternative tactics might be to forgo the boxwood covering in favor of painting the boards, perhaps even adding texture to them with plaster, or partially foiling them with gold leaf. In that scenario, you might install a few hooks or nails around the perimeter of the boards to which you can attach floral swags or garlands.
If you need a larger, free-standing option, you might even opt for a three-panel construction, which can independently support its own weight by angling in the outer two panels when you stand the structure up. Possibilities abound. Have fun with this one!
