I get asked a lot about how a Braid & Wood product gets made. People assume there’s a sketch, a factory call, and then a finished piece shows up a few weeks later. The reality is nothing like that.
The Frame Wall Planter, one of our most popular designs, took over a year from first idea to available for purchase and an entire team of people. And the design part was the longest stretch of the entire process.
I want to walk you through exactly how it happened. Not the polished version. The real one.
The Problem I Was Trying to Solve
Before I ever sketched a single line, I spent months researching. I looked at what was already on the market for wall-mounted planters and honestly, I was surprised at how limited the options were. Also, everything kind of just looked alike and hardly anything was made out of quality materials like solid hardwood.
Most of what I found fell into two categories: purely functional pieces that looked like afterthoughts, or decorative pieces that didn’t actually work well with real plants.
I wanted something different. A wall decor piece that was genuinely plant-forward but also design-forward.
But most importantly, I wanted the product to appeal to people who don’t think of themselves as houseplant people. That’s a hard line to walk.
I was designing for two audiences at once: the person who wants a beautiful trailing pothos on their wall, and the person who just wants a striking and unique piece of wall decor that just so happens to hold something that's alive.
That dual purpose became the design brief. And it’s what made this particular design take so long to get right.
The Sketch Phase
I always start by hand. There’s something about pencil on paper that lets ideas stay loose and imperfect in a way that digital tools don’t. When I start diving into computer aided digital design tools too early, I start refining before the idea is fully formed. Sketching keeps things exploratory.
I went through dozens of sketches for the Frame. Different shapes, different proportions, different ways the pot could sit inside the frame. Some looked too heavy. Some looked too delicate. Some were interesting as drawings but I knew immediately they’d be difficult to almost impossible to manufacture.
That’s something people don’t realize about product design, you’re not just designing how something looks. You’re designing for how it will eventually get made at scale.
Above are some of the first digital renderings of the Frame Wall Planter concept. I was leaning circular for awhile until I started experimenting with this oblong shape seen in the last rendering. When I saw that, I knew I had to go in that direction.
The Shape
The shape I eventually settled on was this oblong, almost oval frame. It had a softness to it that felt organic, modern, and feminine at the same time. Not a circle, not a rectangle, something in between that felt like it belonged on a wall without competing with everything around it.
From Sketch to Digital
Once I had the sketches and renderings I really loved, we moved to formalized design drawings. This is where the product starts becoming real. Exact dimensions. Material specifications. How the pieces connect. How it mounts to a wall.
This is also where my team really stepped up. I do not have a background in product design or any formalized training in mechanical design or design for manufacturing. So, I leaned heavily on the experts here. Their skills alongside my design vision created the partnership needed to bring this product to life.
At this point in the process I started to think more seriously about how the pot would integrate with the shape of the Frame. I knew the concept above wasn't going to cut it. The little leather strap detail at the bottom wasn't giving the elevated and architectural look I was after.
I wanted something more sound and structural. Also I wanted to add a metal component to the design as a nod to my earlier products, the V-Hanger and Plant Shelf.
Below is ultimately what we settled on. A metal ring secured by these fancy little screw eyes on either side of the wood frame pieces. This also created the illusion of a floating pot plus an extensive amount of negative space in and around the frame. If you know me, you know I love me some negative space.
The Frame Wall Planter looks simple when you see it hanging on a wall. But the construction is surprisingly intricate.
The frame itself is made from eight separate pieces of solid white ash hardwood that all come together to form that unique oblong shape. Each one has to be cut, shaped, and joined precisely or the whole form falls apart. Getting that joinery right so it’s strong enough to hang on a wall with a plant in it but still looks clean and seamless was one of the most satisfying challenges of this design.
When I saw the formalized design drawings come together, I knew we had something special. The proportions were right. The form felt inevitable like it had always existed and we just hadn’t made it yet. That’s the feeling I chase with every product.
The Material Selection Nobody Guesses
Here’s the part that surprises everyone: the pot is spun aluminum.
Not ceramic. Not porcelain. Aluminum.
This was an extremely intentional decision, and it’s one of my favorite design choices across the entire Braid & Wood line.
The Frame hangs on your wall. That means whatever sits inside it needs to be lightweight and unbreakable. Ceramic is beautiful, but it’s heavy and fragile and certainly not what you want mounted above your sofa or in a hallway where someone might bump it. I needed something that could take the daily reality of living in a home.
Spun aluminum gave me everything. It’s incredibly light. It’s virtually indestructible. And with the right matte finish, it reads as high-end ceramic or porcelain.
That matte finish here is the key. It’s what gives the pot its warmth and sophistication. Without it, aluminum looks industrial and cold. With this particular finishing method people are genuinely surprised when I tell them it's aluminum.
During testing, this was the reaction that kept coming up: “What is this material? It’s aluminum? I never would have guessed that just by looking at it. It's so lightweight!” That’s exactly the response I was designing for...surprise & delight.
How Does Spun Aluminum Get Made?
Most people have never heard of metal spinning, but it’s a beautiful manufacturing process. A flat disc of aluminum gets clamped onto a lathe and spun at high speed. While it’s spinning, a skilled craftsperson uses hand tools to press the metal over a form, gradually shaping it into the pot.
It’s part machine, part handcraft and the result is a seamless, perfectly symmetrical vessel with no welding, no seams, and no joints.
What I love about spun aluminum is that every pot is touched by a person’s hands during the forming process. It’s not injection-molded plastic. It’s not stamped out by a machine. There’s a craftsperson involved, and that matters to me, even if the customer never sees that step.
The same thing applies when working with hardwood. There is an intricate human process of sanding, refining and joining that happens half a dozen times if not more during the creation of the product.
The Prototype That Actually Worked
Here’s where this story takes an unusual turn. Most product designers will tell you about the dozens of physical prototypes they went through before landing on the final version. Rounds of revisions, things that didn’t work, having to go back to the drawing board.
With the Frame Wall Planter, we nailed it on the first prototype.
I don’t say that to brag, I say it because I think it’s a testament to how much time we all spent in the design phase. All those months of sketching, researching, refining the form on paper and then digitally, thinking through materials and construction before I ever committed to a physical sample, that’s where all the work happened.
By the time we made the prototype, we’d already solved the hard problems. The prototype confirmed what the drawings told us: the proportions were right, the materials worked, the construction was sound, and the piece looked exactly the way I’d imagined it.
That’s rare. And it taught me something I carry into every new design: spend the time upfront. Don’t rush to prototype. Live with the drawings. Question every detail on paper, where changes cost nothing, instead of in production, where they cost everything.
The Surprise That Still Makes Me Smile
I designed the Frame Wall Planter to be versatile so it can hold real potted plants, florals, trailing vines, even faux greenery. But I didn’t anticipate how many customers would buy it purely for its sculptural form.
The majority of my customers have never owned a real houseplant their entire life! They see the Frame as a design object first and a planter second. Some customers have told me they bought it before they even knew what to put in it.
That’s the highest compliment a product designer can receive: someone wants the object for what it is, not just for what it does. It means the design is doing its job.
What I Want You To Know
There are so many different options and choices when it comes to the pieces you can bring into your home.
Braid & Wood products feel different in your hands and look better in your home because I spent a very long time making sure they would.
The choices you don’t see, the material decisions, the construction methods, the months of sketching before anything physical exists, those are the choices that separate something you’ll keep for years from something you’ll replace six months from now.
The Frame Wall Planter took over a year to bring to market and it’s one of the designs I’m most proud of. Not because it was hard, but because I didn’t rush it. I let the process take as long as it needed, and the product is better for it.
That’s how everything at Braid & Wood gets made. Slowly, intentionally, and with a level of care that I hope you can feel the moment you take it out of the box.
