Best Way to Choose Flowers for Your Home

Neutrals and Earth Tones

It is important when choosing flowers – whether fresh or dried — for a room to pick colours and textures that are appropriate for the setting. The suggestions shown on this article ate by no means com­prehensive, but they will help to give you some idea of how to achieve a harmonious balance of colour, texture and mood for different settings. You need to look not only at the colour of the flowers, but at the form they take – whether stiff and uptight, or gracefully branching and arching – and the texture, size and form of any foliage – glossy or matt, spiny or soft, large or small, held in uptight spites of twining and loose.

Neutral shades are among the most popular in the dec­orator’s palette as they ate timeless and very easy to live with. Soft pale shades allow you plenty of scope with decoration, both in the colours of furnishings and in the more ephemeral flowers that you choose. Cool white and cream or green flower arrangements work very well with quite sophisticated white and black contrasts; soft creams, beiges and peach shades look good in the faded chintz interiors so redolent of English country houses, while with the deeper earth-toned neutrals of terracotta and brick you can use soft and subtly shaded autumnal berries and seedheads, as well as grasses, to great effect.

Vibrant Brights

For more modern, sharp-looking interiors, with clear colours and strong shapes, you can choose flower arrangements with contrasts of bright colours, either in mixed displays of contrasting colours, or perhaps by using a grouped display of yellow tulips with a pot of bright red gerberas, lilies and tulips next to them, perhaps the yellow tulips in a scarlet container, and the scarlet arrangement in a yellow one. Warm colours such as bright yellows, reds and oranges can also be used effectively in white or neutral interiors to create a welcome single splash of strong colour. Large waxy flowers – lilies, tulips, amaryllis and hyacinths – are excellent for this purpose.

Sharp acid contrasts of bright yellows, apple greens and brilliant blues look good with jewel-coloured glass, sharp gingham or canvas deckchair stripes, and expanses of plain coloured sailcloth. Glass containers will help to emphasize the strength of colour of the flowers, as will simple containers in a plain contrasting colour.