We spend a lot of time talking to stylists. They come in ahead of a shoot, tell us what they need and why, and over time you start to notice a pattern: people with a sharp eye, styling a room for the camera with no margin for a stem that wilts halfway through the day, are choosing faux — deliberately, over fresh. Not as a compromise. As the smarter option for the job.
If it's the first choice for people whose entire discipline is getting a room right, it's worth considering for your own home or office too.
Three things come up regularly when stylists explain their choices — and Anna Sheridan, an interior designer with Anna Sheridan Creative and one of our clients, put all three better than we could when we asked her.
The first is restraint.
"I tend to go for strong, sculptural pieces, instead of anything too delicate and fluffy. I feel that you can make enough of a statement with just a few stems with a beautiful silhouette, rather than packing a vase to the brim with multiple stems."
A shoot doesn't need a full vase — it needs one or two stems with real structure, doing the work that a whole arrangement would otherwise have to do. A cluttered vase reads as an afterthought. A single considered stem reads as a decision. That's true on a photo set, and it's just as true on a hallway console table.
The second is timing.
"We often shoot campaigns up to six months ahead of the imagery being released, so when we're shooting Christmas in July it can be difficult to get the right seasonal stems from the flower market. Using faux enables us to style for winter in the middle of summer, and vice versa."
Shoots are planned months out, which means stylists are routinely building a Christmas scene in July, or a spring scene in the middle of winter. The flower market can't keep up with a production calendar like that — faux doesn't need to. It looks right whenever the shoot happens to fall, and it looks exactly as right a year later, which fresh never will.
The third is where the stems actually come from.
"Lots of the fresh produce from the flower market is flown over from Europe and South America, and I much prefer to use British grown where possible. Faux allows us to re-use stems time after time and reduce the carbon footprint."
A lot of what moves through the flower market is flown in and used once. Faux gets bought once and reused shoot after shoot.
We see it in what comes off our shelves. These are the pieces our stylist clients reach for shoot after shoot:
Fruit leaf spray. Foliage and fruit on the same stem, which means it's doing two jobs at once — colour and texture — without needing a second piece next to it. It reads as gathered rather than arranged, which is why it's always a top pick.
Shop Fruit Leaf Spray
Mahonia. The same stem we reach for structure in a living room does the same job on set: glossy, deep green, architectural leaves that hold their shape from every angle a camera might catch them at. Styled neat and upright, or manipulated into more of a weeping style, it's versatile.
Shop Mahonia Tree
Yellow chestnut. Autumn in a single stem — the colour a scene needs when the brief calls for warmth without reaching for anything orange or red.
Shop Chestnut Spray
Bauhinia potted plant. Distinctive butterfly-shaped leaves on a loose, branching silhouette — height and presence in a single piece, without needing anything dressed around it. It's the one stylists reach for when a shot needs a full plant rather than another stem.
Shop Bauhinia
Magnolia leaf. It's the leaf stylists use when a scene needs weight low down, at the base of an arrangement, without adding another bloom.
Magnolia flower. The one bloom on this list built to be the hero of a shot. Large, sculptural, and unmistakable. It's rarely paired with more than one or two other stems, because it's substantial on its own.
Shop Magnolia Flower
Nothing delicate for the sake of it, nothing that reads as filler. Every piece on this list earns its place because it can carry a shot — or a room — on its own.
Cosmos. Delicate, papery petals on slender, airy stems that bring movement into a shot. The loose, just-picked look is exactly what a stylist wants, without the fragility that fresh cosmos brings to a long shoot day.
Shop Cosmos
Pimpernel. Smaller and more delicate than the rest of the list, which is why it earns its place — every kit needs a stem or two that softens the sculptural pieces around it instead of competing with them.
None of this is about faux standing in because fresh wasn't available. It's a considered choice, made by people with the eye and the instinct to know exactly what a room needs — every time, regardless of season. Whether you're finishing a home office or a living room, that's the same standard worth holding your own space to.
Your inbox deserves better.
