Are dried flowers really bad feng shui? What about silk flowers?

Thanks for your question! This has been a hot topic with my Mindful Design students as well.

In general, dried flowers are not good feng shui. They’re dead and past their prime, so they don’t have any life energy, and are not recommended as a feng shui adjustment. They are a source of yin qi, which is related to death, and not something you want to have too much of.

That said, don’t freak out if you have dried flowers in your home, especially if you love them! Maybe you have a dried bouquet that’s meaningful to you, like your wedding bouquet. This doesn’t mean that you’ll have bad luck or bad feng shui for the rest of your life.

Not everything in your home needs to be a feng shui adjustment. People often want everything in their home to be perfect, but this shouldn’t really be the goal. As we know by looking at the cycles of nature, including seasons and moon cycles, everything waxes and wanes. Life changes, so you can’t have a perfect feng shui home, nor would you want one.

Rather than worrying about whether everything in your home is “good feng shui”, keep things in your home that you love and have meaning to you, and make sure you take care of them. Even if an item in your home isn’t ideal from a feng shui perspective, you know what’s best for yourself, and no one’s going to stop you from putting something in your home that you love and think is beautiful. This is especially true if it’s just for decoration.

If someone advises you to bring flowers into your home as a feng shui adjustment, however, that’s a time you wouldn’t want to use dried flowers. For instance, if you want to bring in more fire energy, you can do so with fresh red flowers, not dried red flowers. Dried flowers don’t have the same life energy as fresh flowers, and wouldn’t have the same impact on your home’s qi.

Artificial flowers are a bit different because they were never living or dead. If you have a preference for artificial flowers or plants, think about why. Are you choosing artificial plants out of laziness, or out of necessity—having absolutely no light, for example?

If you use something for a feng shui adjustment, it’s always better to use the real thing with living qi, because feng shui is about energy. If you take the easy way out by choosing dried or artificial flowers just because they don’t require the same care and attention as fresh ones, then that decision will be mirrored in the energetic effects that you see in your life as well.

by Anjie Cho