From Moody to Retro: Modern Flower Patterns and Backgrounds

From moody jungle backgrounds that add drama to paper-cut flower collages that add quirk and charm, these are the floral trends of today.

No longer the sole preserve of wedding stationery and children’s brands, the new wave of modern floral backgrounds are dramatically different. Bold, cutting-edge, and visually impactful, contemporary florals work for a wide range of projects, and have incredible versatility.

Discover the power of flowers with our edit of the most cutting-edge floral patterns and backgrounds to use in your print and web designs. These are the modern floral trends to know and use now.

1. Modern Paper Florals

Best for: Editorial design and advertising.

This trend was kick-started by Dutch design studio Adrian & Gidi, who created quirky paper-cut graphics and animations for the Viktor&Rolf Flowerbomb fragrance campaign. Paper-cut flower collages and concepts have a charming craft character and look fantastic teamed with product photos or renders.

A paper-cut animation created by Dutch design duo Adrian & Gidi.

Paper-cut florals bring more texture and color to conventional florals, and allow for designers to experiment with unexpected color palettes such as moody blacks or luxurious metallics.

Try teaming paper-cut flower backgrounds with product mockups for an instant beautifying effect in marketing promotions. Or, integrate them into magazine layouts or cover designs for visual impact.

This poster ad uses paper-cut flowers to bring depth and drama to the design. The layout uses an image by contributor masalskaya.

Discover our favorite paper-cut floral backgrounds to give your designs a quirky craft style:

Image by contributor Ecaterina Petrova.

Image by contributor masalskaya.

Image by contributor Lidda Verano.

2. Moody Jungle Florals

Best for: Event flyers, posters, product presentations, and restaurants.

Flower backgrounds don’t have to be saccharine. Instead, go for dark, dramatic, and theatrical to give an atmospheric edge to flyers or desktop backgrounds. Tying with the lifestyle trend for jungle-inspired flora at home, these backgrounds feature lush greenery with ferns and tropical leaves taking center-stage.

Dark and moody jungle florals are perfect for summoning a nighttime atmosphere in your designs. Image by contributor Ms Moloko.

Jungle-inspired backgrounds are particularly suited to event imagery. Teamed with neon type, they instantly evoke an exotic nighttime setting. Moody jungle florals also bring a grown-up, masculine feel to product advertisements and make a novel and effective choice for menu designs and other stationery for restaurants, bars, or cafes.

If light and airy florals won’t fit the bill, check out these dark, dramatic jungle backgrounds instead:

Image by contributor Nixx Photography.

Image by contributor Chansom Pantip.

Image by contributor Yuri Kabantsev.

3. Bold Color Concept

Best for: Brand campaigns, advertising, social media images, and web banners.

While many flower backgrounds and patterns feature a rainbow spectrum of colors, restricting the color palette of your background to monochrome or dual-color is an instant way to bring modernity to a floral design. Look for images that use atypical colors that appear more artificial than natural flower tints. For example, neons, pastels, metallics, or unusual hues (such as inky black) entice viewers to look twice…or click.

Bold or unusual color concepts are not only striking but can be effective for promoting uniformity across a series of designs. If you’re working within a brand color palette, floral images in brand colors can act as useful backgrounds to corporate stationery, websites, or marketing campaigns.

Don’t miss our edit of flower backgrounds with unusual and bold color palettes:

Image by contributor Katya Havok.

Image by contributor tasslo.studio.

Image by contributor Zamurovic Brothers.

4. Extreme Flower Close-ups

Best for: Website landing pages, app backgrounds, poster designs, and web banners.

Magnified to the extreme, flowers take on a surreal, alien-like beauty, which brings an ethereal feel to large-scale layouts such as landing pages and poster designs. Closeups of botanicals—such as flowers, leaves, and petals—tend to be uniform in color and tone, allowing designers to overlay type effectively. Plus, abstract images are adaptable for a wide range of projects.

Also a natural fit for environmental or research sector businesses, these beautiful photographs help to reinforce scientific messaging. Look for super high-resolution images that will look incredible on retina screens. Tech company Apple often incorporates flower closeups for iPhone and iMac backgrounds. These types of images look particularly spectacular on high-res and retina displays.

Take a closer look at these extreme flower close-ups, perfect for large-scale, high-impact designs:

Image by contributor nialat.

Image by contributor Alexander62.

Image by contributor dreamsky.

5. Framed Florals

Best for: Sales flyers, emails, website landing pages, and call-to-actions (CTAs).

Flowers are associated with renewal and optimism, which is why they’re often used in marketing campaigns to promote new products and make customers feel warmly towards a brand. You can use floral patterns or backgrounds to frame a call-to-action (CTA), such as a coupon code on a flyer or a clickable button on an email. Choose a flower-filled border and see the sales roll in!

Frames help to direct attention to text or a graphic—a useful visual cue that designers and marketers can employ to guide a customer’s behavior. Opt for a collage style or an illustrated wreath to create a simple and effective framing technique.

Frame your florals with our pick of the best floral border backgrounds:

Image by contributor Zamurovic Brothers.

Image by contributor K.Decor.

Image by contributor Flaffy.

6. Antique Botanical Illustrations

Best for: Beautiful stationery, gift packaging, and book design.

Floral backgrounds have a long heritage as a marker of style and elegance. Case in point—luxury fashion house Gucci recently collaborated with Liberty on a collection of bags, shoes, and clothing embellished with the English brand’s world-famous floral prints. Gucci’s knack for reinterpreting the past, giving it a distinctly contemporary flair in the process, is an inspirational lesson for other designers.

British department store Liberty London has long been known for their floral patterns, which are inspired by antique botanical illustration.

Vintage botanical illustrations have been a growing trend in interior design in recent years, and the penchant for antique interpretations of plants and flowers is now spilling over into graphic design, web design, and marketing.

These vintage-style botanical backgrounds will make beautiful additions to stationery design, gift packaging, and book designs, but also make for quirky image choices for online businesses that want to appear more established than their company age might betray.

This business card design uses vintage botanical vectors to create a rustic style. The design uses a bee illustration by contributor AngryBrush, and botanical illustrations by contributor Sandra_M.

Channel the vintage styles favored by Gucci and Liberty with these antique botanical illustrations:

Image by contributor Ivchenko Evgeniya.

Image by contributor Olga Korneeva.

Image by contributor Tania Anisimova.

7. Flowers in Motion

Best for: Poster design, websites and apps, and desktop backgrounds.

Flowers that leap, fly, and, yes, even explode! This dynamic floral trend is about capturing a sense of motion and energy in flower photography, which makes for electrifying backgrounds that appear to leap from the page or screen.

Perfect for creating a sense of depth on 2D designs, flower photos with a sense of motion make for immersive website layouts, working beautifully with scrolling effects and page transitions that help to heighten the sense of movement.

Use in any design where you want to create a sense of movement and energy, or to entice viewers into action. Nothing connects better with the message of a flash Spring sale than a floral explosion!

Energize your designs with these dynamic floral images:

Image by contributor VICUSCHKA.

Image by contributor Smiljana Jovanovic.

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8. Psychedelic Collage

Best for: Social media posts, packaging design, and millennial branding.

These kooky floral collages will help transport your designs to the summer of love. Inspired by ’70s styling and with a slightly ’90s aesthetic, these psychedelic-inspired patterns are nostalgic and dreamy.

Rebellious, free-spirited, and ultra-colorful, these types of background are a perfect fit for branding and social images aimed at younger audiences. They also make for fun, retro backgrounds for packaging designs, as well as eccentric pattern choices for products like phone cases and cushion covers.

Turn back the clock with these groovy psychedelic collage backgrounds:

A modern take in a vintage classic. Image by contributor Golden Shrimp.

Image by contributor Kamrad71.

A surprisingly sophisticated design using vivid colors. Image by contributor Kella Carlton.

9. Flat Lay Florals

Best for: Almost any project, from print layouts to web banners and app designs.

Inspired by the ubiquitous Instagram-initiated photo trend (how many flat lay smashed avocados have you seen of late?), the humble flat lay, nonetheless, remain an enduringly effective image style and makes for versatile, on-trend background imagery.

For flower backgrounds, look for flat lays with photorealistic vector patterns or collage-style arrangements. You can achieve seasonal styling with the choice of flower type, from festive winter berries to spring meadow flowers. White space on the image also allows for placement of type or logos. These flat lay graphics make a great filler image for web banners and desktops.

Take an on-trend aerial view with these flat lay floral backgrounds:

Image by contributor Floral Deco.