The standard way to dry flowers is to tie their stems, hang them upside down, and wait several days for them to air dry. While this method works well and produces lovely life-like blooms, it’s not a great option, if you don’t have upwards of a week to wait. When our florists at Gainan’s Flowers in Billings need our flowers dried fast, we like to use the fastest flower-drying method in the West (and in the East, too).

Hanging Dried Flowers

Flower Drying That’s Almost as Fast as Lightning

With a microwave a couple of other supplies, you can dry your flowers in just minutes!

To dry your flowers in the microwave, you’ll need a microwave-safe bowl or container and silica sand. You’ll first want to remove leaves and extra stem length from your flowers. Then sort them by type or size. Since blooms of different sizes and thicknesses dry at different rates, it’s best to group them together. Arrange the flowers in the container and cover them completely with silica sand. Put them in the microwave with a small glass of water and heat them in 30-second intervals. Check your flowers after each 30-seconds to see if they’re completely dry. Total times will vary, but most flowers will dry completely in two or three minutes.

Bouquet of Dried Roses

Flower Drying in Hours, Instead

The microwave technique works well for any type of flower, unless you want to leave a flower’s really long stem intact and you don’t have a big enough microwave or microwave-safe container. If this is the case, you can always try the second-fastest flower-drying method, the oven. Oven-drying flowers is a great choice, if you want to display your flowers as a bouquet, like the Monet, after they’ve been preserved.

The Monet

To dry flowers in the oven, you’ll need a day when you don’t plan on leaving the house because you’ll need to stick around to check on the flowers, as they dry. First, preheat the oven to its lowest heat setting and line a cookie sheet with parchment or wax paper. Trim any unwanted leaves and arrange your flowers so that they do not overlap or touch on the cookie sheet. This will cause them to stick to each other and dry unevenly. Put your flowers in the oven, leaving the door cracked to allow moisture to escape. Your flowers should be completely dry in eight to twelve hours.

How to Preserve Dry Flowers

Drying flowers prevents them from rotting, so it’s important to make sure all the moisture is out when you first dry them. They’ll feel like tissue paper once completely dry. After your flowers are dry, we recommend giving them a few coats of hairspray to strengthen them and protect them from the elements. Be sure to spray your delicate blooms from a great enough distance that the hairspray hits them gently.

Bouquet of Dried Flowers in Glass Vase

To prevent fading, display your flowers in a location where they won’t receive sunlight. To prevent decay, keep flowers in a low-moisture location, away from any bathrooms or showers.

For more flower drying tips or recommendations on the best bouquets and floral arrangements for drying, we welcome you to stop by Gainan’s Flowers.