Larry Walshe, founder of luxury online florist, Bloom, gives his advice on how to use floral influences in the home to create a stylish, cosy interior.
Winter is a time for hibernation at home so creating cosy, yet chic interiors is the perfect way to see through the colder season in style.
Flowers can provide an instant and affordable uplift to the home, bringing colour, texture, fragrance and depth to different living spaces. They can also be selected and styled to give a nod to the season or to create a cheerful welcome for visiting friends and family this Christmas.
After the year we’ve had, what could be better than hunkering down at home, enjoying well-earned rest and beautiful surroundings?
From making the most of your mantelpiece, to tablescapes and styling dried flowers, there are many ways to add floral touches to enhance your interiors. Larry Walshe, celebrity florist and founder of luxury online flower delivery service, Bloom, is on hand to provide his expert tips on how best to use floral influences throughout the home.
Larry says: “There is nothing quite as uplifting as a beautiful bouquet of flowers or a festive wreath on your front door. With many of us working from home too, we could all do with a mood-enhancing boost right now! Arranging flowers is therapeutic too and you’ll feel a sense of pride seeing your winter creations.
“The beauty of flowers is that you can take inspiration from the colours, depth, pattern and style and incorporate these creatively throughout the home. In winter, dried flowers, branches and, of course, winter greenery are both festive and in keeping with the season, so there is plenty to play with in addition to fresh flowers.”
Read on for Larry’s full guide to incorporating floral influences in the home this winter.
Best winter flowers
You can enjoy wonderful scents, uplifting bursts of colour and even air-purifying properties by adding winter plants and flowers to your home. Peace lilies have a delicate scent and look wonderful as a solo feature in a room. Style with a Scandi-style brass pot or chic white pot for a timeless look.
Lavender smells wonderful and has healing properties too and is often used to combat fatigue and insomnia. Place pots of lavender throughout your home to help see you through the winter.
If you’re looking for lush, green foliage, the Calathea grows well in shady places and makes your house look and feel like you’re in a tropical jungle. The large, patterned leaves are guaranteed to brighten up a room.
Dried flowers
Dried flowers are sometimes overlooked, but far from looking past their best, if styled well these make a striking addition to a room. Popular stems include dried lavender flowers, blue delphiniums and bleached grasses. These look particularly lovely arranged in a coloured glass pot or adorning a mantelpiece.
Alternatively, winter branches – especially willow and ideally paired with red berries – provide a more minimalist, Scandi chic look and work well arranged in tall pots or vases.
Mantelpiece styling
If you’re lucky enough to have a mantelpiece, you can make it the crowning glory of a room by adorning it with greenery entwined with winter flowers. Ideally you would use fresh foliage such as fragrant spruce, conifer branches or eucalyptus, but faux foliage also looks striking when combined with twinkling fairy lights and berries.
Dried orange or lime slices, sprigs of lavender, pinecones… these all make wonderful additions to your mantelpiece marvel. Styling your mantelpiece for winter will make it the striking focal point of a room and draw the admiring eyes (and praise) of visitors and family alike.
Doorscaping
Is there anything more satisfying that seeing a glorious Christmas wreath on your door? Forget plastic baubles and tinsel and instead opt for natural elements for a textured, stylish look. Think fragrant foliage, bendy branches and fabulous fruits, combined with pinecones and sumptuous spruce to create a beautifully festive wreath.
Bloom offers a range of hand-made luxury wreaths created by the highly skilled in-house florist team as well as a range of DIY wreaths that come with everything you need – apart from you individual flair and personality – to create a show stopping festive feature.
Tablescaping
Floral table arrangements aren’t just for weddings and events; you can also use these at home to give your table, home office desk, sideboard or even your bedside table a boost. Depending on your preferred style and the interior of your home, you can choose flowers and vases to match. Think round-bottom glasses filled with posies, country-style jam jar vases with dried flowers, or tall vases with branches.
A floral-inspired centrepiece for the dining table is particularly festive and will work to connect all your other festive decorations. Place greenery (ideally spruce) or winter-style branches in the middle of the table, adding winter flowers, sliced dried fruits, berries and pinecones. Candles or tea lights in votives gathered from around the house on the table provides a soft, wintery glow that looks especially festive and cheerful.
Adding beautiful linen napkins, a statement charger plate and perhaps a coloured water glass will all work to create a setting full of detail that will be treasured by your family. Don’t forget to then add a beautiful cracker to each place setting as a final finishing flourish!
Windowscaping
Take inspiration from Christmas window displays in some of the UK’s best-known department stores and think about how you can “window-scape” in your own home. Fabulous windows are a joy to look at both from inside the house and for passers-by, so think creatively about how you can make your windows stand out this Christmas. Could you combine branches with suspended ornaments, stars and Christmas-themed cut outs of reindeer or snowflakes? Perhaps you could add snow to the windows and create your very own work of art?
Other floral design tips
There are other ways to incorporate floral influences into your home through accessories and soft furnishings. Consider the scent created by your decorations and compliment this with your favourite candles.
Cushions, curtains, rugs and throws in floral or leafy prints work beautifully. Try to use natural materials where possible, such as linen and cotton, as these add more depth and interest. Don’t overdo it on floral prints, however; try to incorporate these subtly to keep it elegant.
Visit www.bybloom.co.uk.
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About Bloom
Launched in October 2020, Bloom is an online luxury flower delivery service created by celebrity London florist and designer, Larry Walshe.
Bloom is unlike any other online flower delivery service, offering a variety of options to suit all requirements, including hand tied Luxury Gift Bouquets (from £75), bunches of Market Flowers, which come direct from the grower (from £30), and flexible Best in Bloom flower subscription (£35 per box, per delivery).
Uniquely, Bloom is reinventing the way we buy flowers online by offering customers a revolutionary and hyper personalised Create Your Own Bouquet service. Starting from £44, customers can pick the stems, foliage, size, colour, sentiment, and overall look of their desired bouquet – just as they would in a florist – with Bloom then bringing the vision to life.
The Bloom website also features a Curated Home Collection of chic vases and trendy pots & plants, and there is a generous loyalty programme for customers to earn reward points towards future purchases.
Bloom is the first luxury online florist in the UK to be entirely sustainable and 100% plastic-free. The packaging is recyclable and/or compostable, all orders are shipped using DPD – the cleanest, greenest courier service currently available in the UK – and the brand also partners with the World Land Trust, planting trees to offset its carbon footprint.
Flowers arrive in Bloom’s stylish signature designed and fresh-water packaging and can be enjoyed at their very best instantly, with free deliveries for purchases of £100 or more.
For more information on Bloom, visit www.bybloom.co.uk.
