The Secret Flower Arranging Tip That Interior Designers Are Gatekeeping

Designer-Coded is where real interior designers detail their tricks of the trade to style their homes for less. If you're looking to craft a high-end aesthetic on a real-world budget, you've come to the right place.

You don't need to be an expert floral designer to elevate your home with stunning arrangements and chic dining room table centerpieces for your dinner parties. While a fantastic flower bouquet can go a long way towards adding color, elegance, and a high-end organic accent to your interiors, people tend to really overthink them. Instead of trying to clumsily fake your way through mixed arrangements, resort to the old KISS principle ("keep it simple, stupid"), and go with a large-scale monobotanical arrangement featuring just one type of flower. That's me letting you in on a little pro secret I learned in my early days on the job as an interior designer.

I picked up this mono-floral trick on furniture and interior photoshoots, as the florals were important for contributing to the overall sophisticated aesthetic, but not meant to be a distraction. By sticking with one type of flower for oversized, abundant displays, the styling team was able to bring in a ton of texture and visual impact without wasting time arranging. I later did this every time I staged a house for sale by using monobotanical arrangements to enhance and elevate the look, which still kept the home as the star of the show. And the same principles can absolutely apply in your home and when entertaining.

Using only one type of flower may sound like it won't pack much of a punch, but the key is all in the scale to achieve that serious "wow" factor with little effort or dough — this floral arranging hack works beautifully for elevating inexpensive grocery store flowers, too. By going for a dense and robust arrangement, you'll get gorgeous results without having to think twice about which complementary flowers to mix in. Plus, this is a great approach for faux flowers, as you can find one fantastically convincing artificial option and load up.

For blossoms that are naturally rounder in shape, you'll want to aim to create a large-scale, extremely dense, and somewhat spherical array. Whether you adore ornamental kale, peonies, tulips, Peruvian lilies, garden roses, daisies, or lilacs, just grab a bunch and go bonkers. Trust me, your guests will be wowed and have no clue you're a floral novice. By packing in the blooms, the arrangement takes on an impressive, elevated quality. For example, a large wide-mouth vase filled generously with white hydrangeas is going to have just as much (and likely more) oomph than a typical amateur's attempt at a multi-flower design.

The second type of mono-botanical floral arrangement that really stuns is ideal for taller, vertically oriented stems. These could be flowering branches (think yucca, quince, dogwood, spirea, magnolia, or cherry blossoms) or flowers (like irises, delphinium, calla lilies, gladiolus, snapdragons, dried grasses) or even greens like eucalyptus or Italian ruscus. While you could use the density-centered approach, it would take a ton of tall, skinny stems to make a massive spherical arrangement, costing you time and money — but they can be amazing, so more power to you if you go for it. A more attainable approach is to create a sprawling and asymmetrical sculptural look with your vertical stems that makes a statement via height.

This knockout display is best for large surfaces like a kitchen island, console, sideboard, dresser, entry table, or floor vase. While it can be done for a dining table centerpiece, the tall scale could prevent you from seeing guests. However, the best part about a vertically oriented mono-floral arrangement is that you don't need many stems to make it look incredible. Also, any large vessel with a narrow neck that keeps the tall stems closer together and a wide base for easier arranging will help create the perfect look.

Snag a few oversized stems at the florist, grocery store, faux floral shop, or even your backyard. Yes, by this I mean you can literally go outside and cut down a few branches to bring inside. Looks like a million bucks but costs nothing! Play with the asymmetrical, fanned-out shape (and consider the height of the flowers in relation to the vase) to inspire a sculptural essence you'll love. Suddenly, your arrangement will look straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest.