As NY living wall installers we work closely with our clients to design the living wall. The client has many design options to choose from. Below is a short list of considerations:
- Color – Colorful or just one color.
- Arrangement – straight line shapes, rounded shapes or wild.
- Depth – plants close to the wall, larger plants that come out of the wall, or a mix.
- Texture – the choice of plants and leave shapes greatly effects the texture of the wall.
Lets look at some examples.
Color
Here are two examples of living walls. One is very varied in it’s color. The other isn’t.
Arrangement
The arrangement of the plants makes a large stylistic impression. Generally there are three designs:
- Plants arranged in formal shapes like straight lines, squares or circles.
- Plants arranged in informal shapes like curves.
- Plants arranged informally without any shape (although even here we actually pay a lot of attention where the plants go).
Depth
Depending on whether the plants hug the wall or trail out into the room the living wall will have different effects. Of course you can have a mix to create nice contracts.
Texture
Some plants have small trailing leaves, other plants have large clumped leaves. And there are thousands of variations in between. Choosing the plants for this criteria can influence how the overall living wall looks.
Lets look at the design considerations again:
- Color – Colorful or just one color.
- Arrangement – straight line shapes, rounded shapes or wild.
- Depth – plants close to the wall, larger plants that come out of the wall, or a mix.
- Texture – the choice of plants and leave shapes greatly effects the texture of the wall.
For example after looking at different living walls a client might ask for:
- Color – Shades of green.
- Arrangement – Mostly wild with some grouping of plants.
- Depth – variegated.
- Texture – mixed texture – large and small leaves.
From those guidelines we would design a wall that looks like this:
