When you receive an exceptionally beautiful bouquet or celebrate a special event with flowers, it’s only natural to want to save them so that you can enjoy their beauty and be reminded of all your happy memories for years to come. At Peoples Flower Shops in Albuquerque, we recommend drying flowers, rather than pressing them, because the results are lifelike and stunningly beautiful.

Bouquet of Dried Roses

The Best Way to Dry Flowers

Although there are speedier techniques that use heat, like oven drying and microwave drying, the best way to dry flowers is to air dry them. If you air dry your flowers properly, you’ll end up with beautiful bouquets that retain their vibrant colors and a fresh posture. Plus, this method for drying flowers works on any type of bloom, including thick roses and hydrangea like those found in our Luxury Roses bouquet. Air drying also allows you to leave their stems completely intact.

Luxury Roses

To air dry flowers, you should first remove their leaves, as this additional foliage can actually introduce unnecessary bacteria to your flowers as they dry, causing them to rot. Once you’ve trimmed the leaves, tie the stems together with string and then use the tail end of the string to hang the flowers upside down in a warm, dark location. It’s best to hang them in a place where they won’t have one side pressed up against a wall, such as from the center of a ceiling beam. You can even hang them from a basic laundry drying rack.

Depending on the weather and variety of flowers, total drying time will typically last anywhere from several days to a few weeks. It’s essential to allow your flowers enough time to dry completely because any remaining moisture will result in the flowers decaying.

Hanging Dried Flowers

How to Keep Dried Flowers Looking Fresh

The secret to keeping dried flowers that retain their beauty for years is caring for them properly. Once your flowers have dried, we recommend spraying them with a few coats of unscented hairspray. This will fortify their delicate structures and build up a barrier between your dried flowers and the elements.

Be sure to display your flowers away from direct sunlight to prevent deterioration and fading. It’s also important to keep dried flowers dry. You’ll want to display them in a location where they won’t be exposed to high levels of humidity such as in a bathroom or near a shower.

Bouquet-of-Dried-Flowers-in-Glass-Vase

Another reason why dry flowers start to look drab over time is that gather dust, and they’re not easily cleaned, using traditional cleaning tools. To keep the dust off your dried flowers, we recommend using a regular hairdryer to blow the dust and cobwebs off. Be sure to set it to its lowest, no-heat or cool setting to prevent damaging the flowers.

For more information about the best ways to dry flowers or for personalized recommendations on the best floral bouquets for preserving, we welcome you to stop by a Peoples Flower Shops location any time.