As you may know, I’m not a formally trained florist. I’ve studied under Kevin, watched countless training videos, become addicted to #FlowerTok, and spent hours making arrangements and practicing the craft. It has been an incredible process, and I learn something new every day.
As I thought about what I would want to read on a florist’s website, I decided to share some of the foundations of floral design I’ve learned along the way. These posts aren’t definitive rulebooks. Instead, I hope they help you create your own arrangements, describe what you want for a wedding or event, or simply understand flowers a little better. When it comes to floral design, there really is no boring part.
Next, I want to talk about color theory. It is so important, mostly because color is often the first thing we notice. Before someone notices any individual flowers, they usually register the overall palette and the feeling it creates. Color creates emotion. Soft pinks and creams can feel romantic, bright citrus colors playful, blues and greens serene, red dramatic, and deep plum or burgundy moody and luxurious.
Color also affects the structure of an arrangement. Dark, saturated flowers can create visual weight and help anchor a design. Contrast between light and dark, warm and cool, and muted and saturated flowers can also create depth and dimension. And texture changes how we perceive color. A dahlia, scabiosa, and anthurium may all be nearly the same shade of burgundy, but because of their different textures, they can feel completely different in an arrangement.
When talking about color, there are a couple of vocabulary words that are helpful to know. Value means how light or dark a color is. Combining pale and dark flowers adds depth, while an arrangement made entirely from colors of the same value can sometimes look flatter from across the room. Saturation describes how intense a color is. Bright coral and muted terracotta may technically belong to the same color family, but they create very different moods. Reds, oranges, and yellows are warm colors; blues, greens, and purples are cool colors.
Another thing to pay attention to is undertone. Flowers rarely come in perfectly pure colors. A pink rose might lean peach, lavender, blue, or red. A white flower might actually be cream or have a hint of green. Those subtle undertones are often why two flowers that are technically the same color either look beautiful together or somehow feel just a little bit off.
Before you choose flower colors, think about proportions. The 60/30/10 approach suggests that one color dominates, another supports it, and a third serves as an accent. It can be a useful starting point, though it’s certainly not a hard-and-fast rule.
To understand color theory, the color wheel is a helpful starting point. Knowing where colors sit in relation to one another makes palettes easier to build. A few common ways to build a floral palette using the color wheel include:
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Monochromatic arrangements that use variations of one color. Think blush, bubblegum, hot pink, and burgundy. Using different shades, tints, values, and textures keeps a one-color arrangement from feeling flat.
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Analogous arrangements that use colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. These tend to feel harmonious and natural together. Think pink, red, and orange or blue, purple, and pink.
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Complementary arrangements that use colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel. Blue and orange, purple and yellow, or red and green create stronger contrast and energy. It’s important to remember that you don’t have to use complementary colors equally. A mostly blue arrangement with just a few orange flowers can be more sophisticated than using equal amounts of both. And the exact version of each color matters: peach and dusty blue create a very different feeling from electric orange and cobalt blue, even though both are blue-and-orange complementary palettes.
Now that we’ve talked about the main color relationships, what about everything else? Arrangements often use neutral flowers to give the eye somewhere to rest. White, cream, beige, brown, and even green can soften a colorful palette and help individual flowers stand out. Muted colors can also act almost like neutrals. Dusty rose, mauve, terracotta, smoky blue, and soft peach are particularly easy to combine with other colors.
A couple of other cool things to remember:
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A small amount of an unexpected color can make an arrangement more interesting. A touch of acid green in a pink arrangement or pale blue in a peach arrangement can keep the palette from feeling predictable.
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Repeating a color throughout the arrangement creates cohesion. Instead of placing all the burgundy flowers on one side, scatter small moments of burgundy throughout the design so the eye travels around it.
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Nature is a great color-theory cheat sheet. Looking at gardens, landscapes, fruit, sunsets, birds, or even vegetables can produce combinations that feel much more nuanced than simply picking colors from a wheel.
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Seasonality naturally influences palettes. Spring lends itself to fresh greens and softer colors; summer often lends itself to brighter, more saturated color; fall brings rust, ochre, burgundy, and brown; winter can support deeper, moodier combinations.
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The vessel is part of the color palette. A cobalt vase, amber glass, white ceramic bowl, or aged brass container changes how the exact same flowers read.
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The setting matters too. Flowers don’t exist in isolation. Table linens, wall colors, bridesmaid dresses, lighting, and surrounding décor all become part of the palette.
Most importantly, there are no color police. Color theory is a tool for understanding why combinations work, not a set of rules that says which flowers you’re allowed to put together. Good floral color isn’t necessarily about matching colors, it’s about creating relationships between them.