the best fake plants/flowers

March 19, 2025 10:07 AM

I am needing to cut my expenses, and this includes my weekly purchase of an Emotional Support Bouquet from my local florist. But it's a huge freakin drag to see my utterly flowerless apartment, week after week. Do you know of any artificial stems/bouquets that are almost as good as the real thing? I figure even a single larger outlay has to be cheaper in the long run than a weekly habit. NB: I really want them to look like actual flowers, at least under casual observation.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese to Home & Garden (20 answers total)

I'm a flower idiot (my home is filled with Lego blooms) but fake flowers typically stand way out even for me. Snake plants, however? I think I've been fooled by 99% of the fake snake plants I've seen in my life. Like artificial peach flavored candy, those big leafy spears seem to be one that most manufacturers seem to have figured out.

If you can be satisfied by greenery without flowers, that's the avenue I'd pursue for the most realism.
posted by phunniemee at 10:21 AM on March 19

If you have a Trader Joe's local to you, right now is the time of year when they have sheaves of daffodils for very little money. Maybe you can still have a fresh bouquet for less than $5 a pop?
posted by Lawn Beaver at 10:29 AM on March 19 [4 favorites]

Honestly you can probably get a decent flowering plant for the price of a bouquet (or cheaper) and they'll flower for a month or three with less care than constant water changes. Getting them to rebloom takes more effort but even if you toss them in two months that's still 1/8 of the weekly price. In spring best bang for buck may be hydrangeas (expensive but last for months, finicky to rebloom), potted daffodils or hyacinths (cheap, need storage for bulbs to bloom again next year) or a flowering geranium (very easy to keep blooming all year). All of these will brighten up any sunny spot.

Otherwise, Ikea has pretty good fakes, especially the hydrangeas. A guy friend was watering my plants and ended up watering the fake hydrangea pots too.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 10:53 AM on March 19 [4 favorites]

There is a super talented artist in my city who makes beautiful flowers and each one is a treasure. She takes custom orders if you have specific blooms in mind. Also she's an all around fantastic human. If her stuff doesn't do it for you then maybe you could find another artist who would love to work with you.

Flowers are medicine and you deserve them in your life.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 11:17 AM on March 19 [9 favorites]

Dried flowers and dried flower bouquets are lovely, although pricey. I've seen them at farmer's markets and high-end market-type specialty grocery stores. If you have space for a garden, you could grow some from seed and dry them. I think Larkspur would work quite nicely, and Eucalyptus, Baby's Breathe especially in the pink variety.

If you are OK using Amazon, I've seen decent fake flowers on there, but I'd check the reviews. They also do sell nice dried flowers our of Asia.
posted by kitcat at 11:51 AM on March 19

There are some beautiful handmade felt flowers on Etsy. You could tell close up that they're fake, but from across the room I think they would work. They can be a bit pricey but still less than a fresh bouquet every week. I've bought from this person before:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MeadowLarkFeltFlora
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:07 PM on March 19

Since people have suggested real flowers, I'll put in a vote for orchids. Depending on where you live you might be able to get them for really cheap, the flowers last a long time, the standard kind you see everywhere (phalaenopsis) is relatively tolerant to lots of conditions and takes minimal care, if you keep taking care of them they can bloom again and again for years... and they come in a lot of colors.

And if you have a sunny window and live in a place where they're sold, I'll add bougainvillea to I claim sanctuary's list.
posted by trig at 1:13 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Not wanting to threadsit but just reiterating the desire is for a fake flower solution. I have zero, less than zero, desire to care for a live plant. The sun exposure anywhere in my apartment is negligible, I have no garden, and have never once succeeded in keeping a plant alive for any amount of time.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:33 PM on March 19 [5 favorites]

When I lived in a dreary walkup in NYC I choose some dried cattails, moss, and wheat stems. And some orange reddish bulbous looking things for some color. It suited me fine, even though they weren't "flowers" . I have an aversion to fake flowers.
posted by Czjewel at 1:43 PM on March 19

I ordered these faux white Hibiscus flowers to look like blooms on my very real swamp rose mallow for weird garden reasons (tried to attract beneficial wasps to eat the sawflies eating my mallow, didn't work sadly). The fake ones look pretty real to me! I like that each sprig came as one open and one opening bud, which added a nice touch.
posted by Drosera at 1:47 PM on March 19

The answer to this used to be Pier 1 (RIP), and currently a good source is Pottery Barn. The blog Chris Loves Julia recently did (and periodically updates) a list in a range of prices.
posted by ersatzkat at 2:06 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

If you are anywhere near Chicago, Gethsemane Garden Center sells extremely high-quality faux flowers in their gift shop. They have talented staff that can help you put together arrangements for any taste, from traditional and simple to really extravagant and artistic. Their stuff is exceptionally good. I used to work there selling real plants, so I can vouch for this store. It's family owned and located on the north side of the city. Not sure they do mail-order though.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:58 PM on March 19

Depending on where you live, perhaps later in the year you would consider wild pick-your-own flowers. This is the time of year when bringing some cut forsythia into the house and putting it in a vase often results in beautiful yellow flowers. Of course everything depends on what is available in your area, growing on waste ground, which is not a cultivated wild flower bed.

If you go with artificial flowers the thing you will need to look at most closely is often the greenery. If it looks fake there is no hope for it. You might want to look at some flower arranging instructions, as buying a spray of fake flowers tends to look like you have just a clump of fake flowers because of the way they are massed, whereas if you treat them like flowers you cut yourself, and use wire cutters to clip the stems and rearrange them more realistically with either greenery or other fake flowers they can look a lot better.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:04 PM on March 19

Hanaco (a Japanese company) makes some truly realistic silk flowers. They're designed to be used in low-maintenance ikebana displays.

If I were you, I'd buy a few different kinds of flowers and greenery (the pine and wakamatsu are especially good here, but I would avoid even Hanaco's larger leaves). That should give you enough to allow you to rearrange and recombine displays/bouquets. And, if you find other silk flowers you like, you can add them into the mix.
posted by yellowcandy at 5:08 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

When you find your fake.flowers, maybe a stalk or two of eucalyptus would add a bit of life. They smell good and last forever.
posted by Ftsqg at 5:10 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

Fake greenery is generally more believable than fake flowers, in my experience. I have some cute little plants on a tall bookshelf trailing down the sides and people have asked me how I got them so lush. The Amazon listing is this but they were an older version, a set of three in different varietals with longer trailing tendrils. I’ve also got a big fake spider plant which iirc I got on a big discount from Joann’s that looks great in a terracotta pot atop my cupboards, even though my cat chews on it all the time. (Said cat is why all my plants are fake.)

You’ve got about two best bets for in person faux floral shopping. One is very time limited - Joann’s is closing all over, and they are pretty universally all complete tips, but their “bloom room” florals are great. If you have one that’s still open near you, brace yourself before you go inside, and dig through the remains of their floral section. The other is also a gamble, but Home Goods stores have some of the nicest fake florals at almost reasonable prices. It’s really a crap shoot though since their inventory changes all the time and varies by location, but right now is probably the best time of year because it’s about the furthest from Christmas greenery overwhelm, and all the Easter stuff will already be picked over. I’ve got a lovely bunch of faux blue hydrangeas from Home Goods that are just gorgeous, and when I looked them up they had been selling from some wedding wholesale company for like hundreds of dollars a stem.

You might have a nicer result if you combine fake and fresh flowers, to help evoke the newness feeling of getting a whole bouquet. Look for stems and picks that you like from places like home goods, joann, world market, and keep an eye on clearance sales by pottery barn and terrain, plus open box items from wayfair. Trim them so you’ve got a bunch of single stem options and smaller groupings, and then pick up individual flowers from your florist and go gathering for natural stems and maybe neighbors who are cool with some opportunistic pruning. Don’t forget to look for colorful foliage. Then gather a grouping of bud vases, clean jars and glasses, and combine your real flowers with your fake ones, to complement each other. Since you’re just getting short lived cut flowers you can put the plastic stems in the water with them, if you like, or keep them separate but near each other. There’s definitely a wide range of cost and time choices you can make between fresh weekly bouquet and grandma’s dusty plastic tulips.
posted by Mizu at 9:40 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

Along with HomeGoods, check out Cost Plus World Market for nicer faux greenery and blooms.
posted by samthemander at 12:49 AM on March 20

I really like these bouquets from Bloom Objects (https://www.bloom-objects.com/). It’s a Danish company, but they seem to offer international shipping for equivalent of $43.

I got one for my mums place as she has a room that doesn’t get much natural light. It looks good, but they are pricey!
posted by A! at 7:18 AM on March 20

More on the fantastical side and depends on your budget, but my friend has a lovely collection ($20/month subscription or single pieces) of these glow-in-the-dark painted and dried moonbeam flora by Tyler Thrasher, which look great in the light as well.
posted by eyeball at 7:29 AM on March 20

Fake orchids, like phalaenopsis, tend to look good. Their thick, waxy leaves seem easier to duplicate then paper-thin leaves of other plants--leaves that are typically just material with rough edges (often with frayed threads) that are the result of die-cutting. Often they have a mossy covering over the pot, which both mimics the natural growing medium and also helps disguise their artificial nature. Here's a random example.
posted by sardonyx at 8:23 AM on March 20