Float Decoration 101

The entire surface of a Rose Parade float MUST be covered in natural materials such as seeds, beans, grains, fruits, vegetables, tree bark, leaves, dried flowers, fresh flowers, etc... The surfaces that appear to be "painted" are actually coated with an underlayer of white glue upon which is manually dabbed powdered floral material which is prepared by grinding seeds and flower petals into a fine dust. Many different floral materials are required to achieve the range of colors.

Learn how we decorate a Rose Parade float in these video clips.

Note: Our video clips are provided in .mp4 video format for playback using an HTML5 capable web browser such as Safari which is provided with recent versions of Apple's OSX. Some versions of the Microsoft Windows OS and its Internet Explorer web browser support HTML5 and play .mp4 files, some versions do not. Should you get an error message, try using a different web browser such as Apple's Safari or Google's Chrome which in our testing works nicely with Windows 8.1. We also provide links below for you to download the .mp4 files to your computer and/or mobile device. To play downloaded .mp4 videos with some versions of Microsoft Windows you might also want to install Apple's QuickTime player for Windows.