How Do You Achieve Vibrant Colours When Pressing Flowers?

There’s nothing more joyful than opening a flower press full of vibrant, colour-drenched flowers. Contrastingly, it can be disappointing to place lots of different coloured flowers into your flower press, only to open it three weeks later, full of anticipation, and find the colours have faded or browned. There are lots of different factors that can affect how well your flowers keep their colour during the pressing process such as the age of the flower, the variety of bloom (some just don’t press very well!), and the quality of the equipment you use to press your flowers.

If you are after beautiful results, I can’t stress enough how important it is to use a good quality flower press - one that is sturdy enough to apply strong and even pressure to your flowers - in combination with the right type of absorbent paper. I recommend using blotting paper as it is designed to absorb moisture quickly, which will help with keeping your flowers colourful.

If you’d like to learn more, The Pressed Flower Handbook provides detailed guidance about picking flowers to help you to achieve the best pressings with vibrant colours; it includes tips on when to pick them and what to look for when selecting your flowers, alongside inspiring suggestions for gorgeous flowers and foliage that you might like to try pressing during each of our stunning seasons.

As pressed flowers are natural, once they have been pressed (even when they’ve retained wonderfully vibrant colours) they will then gradually fade and change colour to vintage tones of browns and creams with the passing of the years. This is completely normal and an intriguing and charming part of flower pressing. As the flowers age and fade, they become extra special - holding stories and magic of times past in their preserved shapes and forms. If you’d like to read more about colour change over time, and why it’s something to embrace and celebrate, take a look at my blog post all about this fascinating subject.