Corporate styling solutions – the main benefits of dried vs. fresh flowers

Today, no corporate styling service can afford not to draw their clients’ attention to the main benefits of dried flowers. Here’s why.

The ins and outs of corporate flower styling

Offering flowers as a corporate styling solution is always a great idea, but over the last few years, cut flowers in vases have become a more of an anti-eco-conscious statement than ever before. And this is not a message companies and corporations want to send.

There are so many reasons why fresh flowers are capable of sending the wrong message to people. Too many air miles, too big of a carbon footprint, lack of seasonality, and let’s not forget the need to change the water in the vase every day or else you run the risk of stinking out a room with stagnant water funk!

If those don’t sound like good enough reasons to change your corporate styling to dried flowers, then maybe these will.

IN: Dried flowers can be styled to look oh-so-modern

The natural hues and tones are back in a really big way. Once it was all about endless platforms of blonde wood and millennial pinks, but now corporate styling is set to reflect a more thoughtful tone; think natural wood tones and earthen hues.

Dried flowers are the ideal way to segue your corporate style back into neutral territory. With their organic structures and shapes, delicately muted colours, and feel-me textures, dried flowers like soft pampas grass and spikey proteas simply scream a new modern approach to decoration.

Add to that the fact dried flowers are low maintenance, on-trend, and also happen to last pretty much forever, and you’ll see why corporate events and lobbies are investing in dried flower arrangements in a big way.

Corporate dried flower tips:

• Remember to keep containers and vases modern and minimal. Avoid the fussy look like rustic art glass or crystal cut: think clean, long lines and curves to emphasize the beauty of dried flowers
• If the dried flowers you need are for a once-off corporate event, encourage attendees to interact with the dried flowers – they won’t bruise or fade, nor do they have any pesky pollen making people sneeze or stain their clothes
• Experiment with different Australian varieties: leucadendrons; anthiriums; peonies; dahlias. The choice is yours. You can kiss seasonality goodbye when you use dried flowers because they are harvested, dried, and stored all year round.

OUT: Garish day-glow dyed dried flowers

Fresh or dried, those multi-coloured, rainbow dyed flowers are corporate styling roadkill. Sure, they might have been a fun way to spark a conversation around the table once, but now they just look entirely inappropriate an any corporate event, and certainly don’t belong in a boardroom.

If you want to add a specific tone or colour to the dried flower arrangement at your next corporate event (companies have been known to request custom flower colours in keeping with their logo or connected to the season), it is possible to contact your nearest dried flower provider. They will discuss the dried flower colours they have available, and might even be able to source a specific shade for you.

The main benefits of knowing why the pros of dried flowers outweigh the cons of fresh ones

If your client wants to understand why you are pushing the benefits of using dried flowers for corporate styling, it’s easy to list the reasons – because there are so many! For special corporate events or an eye-catching display in a waiting room or lobby, dried flowers are storming company’s board rooms all over Australia.

1. We are all beginning to care about living sustainably, and never is this more so than the shift away from fresh cut flowers. By choosing dried flowers that have been locally grown and have zero air miles attached to them (transporting dried flowers is super-easy because they are so light), it shows the customer that the company cares. It’s also great to have the chance to support your local flower growers, and dried flower suppliers and distributors!
2. After a while, when people see a fresh flower arrangement comprising of imported, out of season blooms, it will shout out to them ‘conspicuous consumption,’ and no one wants to hop on that band wagon.
3. Sustainability is more than a buzz word, it’s become a way of life. And this, more than anything else, had tolled the death bell for imported, out of season, fresh flowers.
4. When did you last see a display of faux luxe flowers? You know the ones we’re talking about – the silk flowers or plastic flowers that are always ever so slightly dusty or ragged round the edges. They have been consigned to the corporate styling solutions from hell box forever, and with good reason. Why have a fake flower arrangement in your company showroom, when you can have an ikebana-inspired dried flower arrangement that lasts for an extremely long time, but also somehow manages to look effortlessly organic and natural. Dried flowers haven’t only eliminated the need for fresh flowers, they pushed faux flowers out of the spotlight too.
5. Ikebana enthusiasts embrace this art form’s aesthetic of including the flower’s imperfections and natural curves. And what better way to do this than with dried flowers? This style works very well with the nature-driven undercurrent in corporate interiors right now.

Not all corporate flowers tick the styling boxes these days. There’s been a real change over the last few years, and it’s up to you to tell your clients about it. Yes, even today, with water increasingly becoming a precious commodity and pollution growing at such an alarming rate, there are still those companies out there – hotels, banks, and global brands – that insist on presenting their customers with flowers to greet them.

As corporate styling solutions lean more toward dried flowers to express their clients’ individuality and eco-consciousness, and consign fresh and faux flowers to the waste bin of history, the local dried flower producers out there will not only thank them, they will rise to meet any corporate styling challenge that comes to their attention.