There’s nothing like fresh flowers in the home to add beauty and lift the spirits. When you purchase flowers for yourself or as a gift, you’re delivering happiness and joy. And fresh flowers also bring many other benefits, including positively impacting your health and wellbeing.
But to ensure that your beautiful blooms are giving you their best, have the longest life and are displayed to their best advantage you have to choose the right vase.
Today we’re sharing a few inside tips on how to choose the right vase for flowers. This includes the five vases you should have in your cupboard – and on display – for well-cared for, fresh-cut blooms.
How to choose the right vase for flowers
Tip 1: Flowers choose the vase
As a first step, your flowers choose the vase. If you have long stemmed roses, you’ll need a tall vase. Wildflowers with their weaker stems will need a short, squat vase to better support them.
However, your cupboards really can’t hold an endless array of vases. So, don’t ever be afraid to trim stems to better suit the vases you have on hand. Or you can use pebbles, foam or vase-fillers to better style your flowers.
Tip 2: Consider proportions
To showcase your blooms to their best advantage, it does help to get your flower-to-vase ratio in the correct ballpark. The traditional rule of thumb is that the length of flower stems should be around one and a half to two times the height of a vase. An example would be long-stemmed roses (Valentine’s Day, anyone?). If their stems are 50cm long, your vase should be around 25-35cm tall.
Tip 3: Too narrow, too wide or just right
The vase-opening is key, much more so than the size of the vase itself. Always look at the size of your vase-opening, as it will determine how your flowers will ‘fall’ or settle into place and impact the final size of your arrangement.
The best five vases to have on hand
Armed with a little knowledge on how to choose the right vase for flowers – here are our suggestions for the most versatile five vases to have on hand to best showcase your blooms.
One – The Bud Vase
A bud vase is designed to hold a single bloom. This might be a favourite flower plucked from a bouquet or arrangement and trimmed to size to display on your bedside table. If you don’t have a bud vase, a vintage teacup or favourite coffee cup can do double-duty. It’s a charming, whimsical way to showcase a single, perfect bloom.
Two – The Ceramic Vase
A ceramic vase is a handy, hard-working vase to have in your floral arsenal. We all know that vase-water should be changed when cloudy, but ceramic vases give you a little leeway on that. And you’ll be able to get an extra day or two out of your fresh cut flowers.
So, whether a timeless ceramic vase or a novelty face vase, a treasured ceramic vase can lift your spirits as much as the blooms they contain.
Three – Small Wide-Neck Vase
Small cube or fish-bowl vases can be a versatile addition to your vase stash. Small delicate blooms look lovely, of course. But you can also always cut longer-stemmed flowers to size, so your proportions are pleasing.
Anything with delicate petals will look fabulous in a small wide-neck vases, and best displayed in the middle of a coffee table or dining table. Carnations, frangipanis, or even roses would look gorgeous and draw the eye.
Four – Tall Cylinder Vase
This straight up and down vase is a classic for a reason. They’re perfect for most floral bouquets. You should only need to minimally trim steps for the bouquet to ‘fall’ into place when placed into the vase.
This vase will look fabulous placed on an entry-table, a mantlepiece, piano or in pride of place on your kitchen bench. Larger vases are fantastic for plants and entryways as well. Our seasonal bunches would be beautifully displayed in a tall cylinder glass vase.
Five – Narrow-Neck Vase
A vase with a narrow neck is surprisingly versatile. Whether ceramic or glass, a narrow-neck vase is the perfect choice to display long-stemmed flowers. Just trim the stems to size, guided by our proportion tip above. A bright bunch of gerberas always look wonderful in a narrow-neck vase.
Speak to our expert team!
We hope this post has helped with how to choose the right vase for flowers. At The Flower Farm, we are Redlands’ fresh flower experts and love to create bespoke bouquets and arrangements for all occasions from just because to birthdays and more. With a little know how, your blooms will live their best life on display in the vase that’s ‘just right’.