Meet the Floral Designer Making Carnations Cool

The floral world can be judgmental. Just look at the design breakdown of bouquets and arrangements. Florists often follow the age-old rhyme “thrillers, fillers and spillers'' or simply “focals and fillers” for smaller designs. The practice elevates some flowers, such as peonies and hydrangeas, to luxury, dream-wedding status, while branding others as cheap, not as pretty filler. But Kaylyn Hewitt is on a mission to flip the script for one of the most overlooked fillers in the world: the carnation. The lead floral designer and content manager at The Bouqs Co. loves working with dianthus caryophyllus, aka the grocery store flower.

“Carnations are the unsung hero of flowers,” Kaylyn says. “What inspired me to work with them was a general belief that they can’t be beautiful or that they are second best. I don’t believe that and it’s been fun slowly changing people’s minds with each design.” If you’re not convinced carnations are cool, Kaylyn’s ready to change your mind, too. She whipped up five carnation-forward designs just for HGTV at The Bouqs Co. studio just outside of Los Angeles. Take a look at these gorgeous, Pinterest-worthy bouquets and learn how to style carnations at home.

Pairing bright red and hot pink together has been so popular on the runway in the last couple of years and Kaylyn shows off the trendy hue duo in this bouquet. But it's not just a bunch of carnations in two solid colors. If you look closely, you'll notice that some petals have a watercolor or dip-dyed-like gradient. And that extra flair comes from variegated petals.

Tie-dye might be in style this year, but carnations have been on the trend for thousands of years. In addition to the flower's dramatic ruffles, the petals themselves have even more drama thanks to variegation or having different colored zones on a leaf or petal. "The variegated petals on both varieties of the carnations were so fun to play with," says Kaylyn. "Their petals pack a few different colors and I worked to play off each of them with the additional flowers in the design."

In the wedding world, more brides and grooms are opting for greenery-forward florals such as all-white bouquets or all-foliage arrangements. Here, Kaylyn riffed on the trend and created a winter white palette with just a hint of springtime green. "These white and green hydrangeas added so much softness to this design," she says. "They are the perfect kind of pillow-y."