Doughnut walls are a wonderful thing for almost any event that you might be having. While they’re commonly a thing attributed to weddings, they can honestly be added on to nearly anything, from retirement parties to bah mitzvahs.
In this article, we’re going to talk about some of our favourite ideas for DIY donut walls that are sure to spice up any event. They all have twin brilliance to them - not only are they a great way to operate a first-come-first-served system for the sweet treats of an event, but they also set up an excellent option for you to bring some beauty to a room that you’re celebrating within.
So often, the rooms that we hire out to celebrate in are a little drab and disappointing. A great way to ensure that the room you’re working with is precisely the opposite of that is to get a vast donut wall - our ‘contrast backdrop’ or ‘initials’ options would be ideal for that: they both create fantastic focal points!
Mirror Donut Wall
A mirror donut wall is a great option because there is a whole suite of different options to it that you could opt for. The simplest option out there is likely to get a large mirror from a charity shop, thrift store, or estate sale and use self-adhesive hooks to create the donut wall you’d love to have.
Another great option, though, could be to have a number of different mirrors. While this is a little more of a bohemian option for the decor of a wedding doughnut wall, boho is really having a moment! To that end, picking up a dozen or so smaller mirrors and mounting them to the wall very near one another is a great way to create a swath of an utterly unique room.
If you do opt for a single, enormous mirror, we would argue that the best option could be something that looks a little fancy. Whether silver or gold and polished or burnished, something that looks elegant and expensive can make a room more attractive. The contrast between that fancy-looking mirror and the fact that your guests will be asked to walk up and interact with it creates an exciting space.
Gold, when in large quantities, can seem to be a little gaudy and extravagant. If that’s something that you’re concerned about in your event, we’d recommend adding faux foliage around the outside of the mirror, as in the above photo - green and gold set one another off wonderfully well.
Honeycomb Donut Wall
Geometric designs have become more and more common centerpieces in recent years, and we may have been suckered, just a little, by the idea of creating a self-service food environment with a geometric design at its heart.
In most hobby shops around the world, you can be sure to find a suite of different boxes, tubes, and similar implements that are hexagonal. These will be the ideal staging posts for your donuts, especially when you consider that you could get different sizes and mount them offset from one another.
The main drawback of a honeycomb donut wall is that it requires more forethought out of all the options on this list. You need to go to a hobby store, find various different honeycomb chambers, and do a little math to figure out the best way to design them to stand and interact with one another. If you don’t mind the math and DIY with a few screws and nails, this entire concept could be a great way to showcase your talent and creativity!
These honeycomb styles are great freestanding doughnut walls for every occasion.
Copper Hook Donut Wall
This is something utterly original that we’re besotted by - it’s so pretty and so wonderfully unique!
The basic idea is simple - using simple, cheap, and affordable supplies from a plumbing store, you can create a set of copper pipes that basically look like a wide ladder - the rungs are the places from which the donuts will be hung. This is a great way to do things because it's so inventive - it’s something people surely won’t have seen before, and it allows you to bring copper to the fore in your event design. When working with copper, bronze, or brass in a palette, any excuse is a good one.
The donuts themselves hang from the rungs of the ‘ladder’ via s-hooks, which are something that can also be commonly purchased from a DIY store. While they aren’t really a plumbing tool or material, they’re used in other home projects.
The final benefit of this system that we’re thrilled to mention is the fact that the hooks themselves can be removed from the finished project and cleaned. In effect, this means that the hooks can be made food safe with little to no additional effort, which is something that will go unnoticed but will be massively convenient to you.
Contrast Backdrop Wall
We haven’t mentioned this too much in this article, but a donut wall can make photos interesting when used as a backdrop. We found a photo (which you’ll be able to see above) of a couple that is using the donut wall as a backdrop for their cake-cutting photos, but the choice is yours. You could also use the donut wall as a backdrop for photos in a more general sense or offer some props and allow your guests to use the spot as prime selfie-taking territory.
The best way to ensure that your backdrop wall strikes a good contrast to the subjects of the photos is to ensure that you use dark wood and bright pastries. This might sound odd but trust us - these two options will interact with one another really well, leading to an utterly bright and beautiful backdrop wall.
The aim of any backdrop is to remain neutral while also being eyecatching. This is quite a tricky feat to accomplish. With dark wood and bright donuts, the two ranges of color almost neutralize one another while also catching the eye when compared to a dull wall or window behind it.
Initials Wall
These are something that is quite tricky to actually accomplish in a number of situations, so we’d recommend either having these made or finding a place that might be able to hire them out to you. The reason that they’ve made it onto this list, though, is that they’re so eye-catching!
If you can find some large sheets of wood and you’re not afraid of some time spent with a saw, then these initials walls aren’t that hard to make - two large letters representing the happy couple’s initials could be a great idea, especially at a wedding. You could also do ‘HB’ for a happy birthday or something a little more frivolous, like ‘LOL’.
Because you’re likely to be making these yourself, we love that you have a lot of control over them. You can easily paint them to be the correct colors that fit in with the scheme of your wedding day, or paint the two letters in the happy couple’s favorite colors.
Just like the contrasting backdrop above, these letters do also give you and your guests some ability to create an excellent selfie opportunity - people will be thrilled to pose with them, we’re sure of that.
However a donut wall makes it into your celebration, we’re sure there’s an option on this list for you. Whether you opt for copper pipes or pick up some sheets of wood to create large letters, there are great options available. We hope you enjoy making your donut wall just as much as you enjoy eating the donuts!
