I have different customer types - one type likes all white flowers, this is the type that probably would buy white lilies from the supermarket. A cool classy but very easy, non demanding choice. A lot of men ask for white flowers when they are giving a gift. The second type goes for rich colours, dark reds, dark oranges, dark blues with lots of lime green to spark the flowers off - this is a reaction to fashion - Sarah Raven grows and popularises these colours, as do gardeners like Christopher Lloyd. These customers tend to be 20-40 year old women. A third type likes pastels and the country garden look these are fewer in number for me and tend to be slightly older. Jane Packer a British upmarket florist (though she works nationwide through mail order and department stores) is pushing pastels, what she describes as "old underwear colours" which doesn't sound very appetising but I think refers to the grey base to the pastels.
Having said that most customers don't choose on colour but on liking a particular flower. My quickest seller last year was crocosmia lucifer - a great firey orange red.
But having said this, these are my customers, they are a generally affluent, quality conscious, environmentally aware group who want something that you can't get in Walmart.
As I said somewhere else the only colour I have difficulty selling is yellow - I think that when it mixes with other brights it perhaps becomes too garish, or reminds people of the yellow/pink bunches of flowers you get outside petrol stations.
Light must effect people's colour choices - what looks garish in the sunshine might look cheery in cloud or vice versa.
Best wishes
Jane

JAne, we have a climate that is sort of similar to yours though probably milder winters. We have many overcast days andyou are right about the difference of sunshine and cloud.

The prettiest pastel bouquets fade to nothingness outside on a foggy or overcast morning. Then they have to be bright enough to get people to stop and get out of their cars, or detour 10 feet if they are walking to the espresso stand across the street.

We have other customers who don't care what the flowers are as long as they are the brightest bouquet we have..otehres who always want purple, some who love apricot roses, etc.

One of the things I am excited about is that my new stand has afternoon shade and I should be able to sell roses without them frying in the mid-summer sun!

Foggy, drippy Easter morning.I just set out 19 $5 bouquets and 6 $3's at our two stands. Yes, Daffodils and hyacinths and early tulips DO show up well in the fog!

I don't think you can go wrong with a wide variety. A little something for everyone.

What a wonderful post! Jane finds yellow difficult to sell but her male customers find safety in white, (and Jeanne won't stock orange.) My sales are at a farm market and I almost never come home with brightly colored flowers, not even orange. Mostly it's muddy, middle colors that are passed over whether by me when I make up bouquets or the buyers. My customers are about 1:3 men to women. I find men are overall more likely to say "Put me together something nice." Women tend to be more exact about what colors they want and those colors are more likely to be blending types. Although I think my bouquets are relatively unsophisticated, I do calculate color combinations when I am buying seeds etcetera. Hodge-podge color bouquets are cheap at Costco.

I find that I usually use three different colors per bouquet. I honestly can't say that I've noticed any one combination sell better than the others. I'm also very guilty of selling a lot of red white and blue theme colors even when theree is no holiday. I love making bouquets but I can't seem to create them when some one is standing right there asking for "3 of these and four of those, two of those six of these spikey things and how about some of that STUFF. I would much rather have the bouquets made in advance. Thankfully for me a large portion of my customers are happy with my pre-made style. I also find that when people order flowers, there idea of what a color is called is sometimes completely different than my idea. I had a women tell be that she wanted absolutely NO BLUES for the flowers, but than she questioned me on "Why didn't you use any of the( blue) ageratum or (blue) statice. I do envy any of you who can create on demand. I wish I had that patience. HEIDI

According to all the florist magazines I have seen the "in" colours for this year are browns - they are full of photographs of coffee coloured iris and tulips teamed with apricot carnations. I saw some brown tulips at the flower wholesalers last week when I was picking up tissue but I would worry that they might look dead quickly.
The other thing that I meant to say in the last post is that for me it depends on the time of year. I probably will sell some yellow when I take a stall tomorrow as it is Spring and people associate yellow with spring and sunshine. Somehow, by the time I have sunflowers in autumn, they prefer reds and oranges. Hopefully tomorrow people will want dark blue as my dark blue roman hyacinths are all out earlier than other colours and co-incide with pulmonaria 'Blue Ensign'and grape hyacinths. There is monotone and monotone! I suspect they wouldn't show up in the fog.
Best wishes
Jane

This is interesting. I read somewhere the term growers bunch. Can someone explain please what this is?

A grower's bunch is a bunch of all the same flower, like all the same yellow sunflower, or all red tulips, etc. Sometimes it will be different colors of the same flower, like all different colors of the same size of zinnias, but more often it is all the same color.

Aw, come on, I do use SOME orange! I grow quite a few different orange flowers on purpose. I just get annoyed when I think I'm getting peach or terracotta and it turns out orange. If I'd wanted orange, I'd have ordered it, not peach or terracotta! Orange has no equal for some real pizzazz with blue or purple flowers. I learned from Lizalily and combined some orange with pink and white last year, and those flew out of there. Give me time, I'm learning!

The first year I made a lot of pastel bouquets and a lot of cool-color bouquets, with lots of pink, blue, and purple, because that's what I like best. Funny, though, those didn't sell as well as the ones with bright, saturated colors, especially reds. Now I only make a couple of pink-blue-purple bouquets for market. I have two customers who prefer them, so I try to keep them happy. If they don't show up that week, I might end up taking the pastels home, or giving them to other merchants. For the most part, the bright bouquets go first, although I haven't really paid attention to which colors are the most popular. I do coordinate colors in the bouquets; people can buy bouquets with all colors thrown in higgeldy-piggeldy, much cheaper, from another market vendor. I make lots of different combinations, trying to have something for everybody, and they mostly all sell. One of my favorite combinations is the deep garnet red of Moulin Rouge or Chianti, with Blackjack glads, and the same color of scabiosa, combined with white lilies and any other white touches I can come up with, and maybe some Love-Lies-Bleeding amaranth. I call it a black-and-white bouquet, although it's really deep dark red and white. I've never taken one home, but only one or two customers will reliably buy them. I think they're elegant. Most folks prefer more color. I can use those same two colors but add bright pink also, and it's much more likely to sell. There are folks who like pale yellow sunflowers with some garnet reds, with some Strawberry Blonde sunflower thrown in - they are a combination of pale yellow and garnet red - it's sort of an antique-ish look, goes well with the yellowish-tea-ish colored quilts a lot of folks prefer to modern brights. I can put together nice bouquets of just sunflowers and nothing else in those two colors, but they don't sell as well as the more mixed bouquets, or as well as the bright-colored sunflower bouquets. Any combination of lime green and magenta red, or lime green and purple, both with white touches, just flies out of there. I do so wish I could grow zinnias well, there is just no substitue for a lime green zinnia! I have to do my best with green glads and green cascading amaranth. Bright red combined with white, with maybe a tiny touch of pale yellow, sells well. And there is no such thing as too much deep blue (NOT purple) delphinium. They go with everything.

I think ANY big, bright main-event flowers sell a bouquet. It's harder to sell a bouquet with main-event flowers that are pastels.

I don't know whether to be glad or sad that nobody at our market seems to follow fashion in their bouquet color choices. I don't have to worry about not having the current fashion colors, but I don't get exposed to new ideas, either. I rely on the folks on this forum for that. But I think I'll resist the all-browns look, as well as I resisted the brown-and-turquoise last year. Some fashions I just can't buy into! I can certainly make all-browns, but they'd be confined to sunflowers. Doesn't sound that appealing to me.

Heidi, I'm with you. I'd have a hard time creating a bouquet with somebody else telling me what to put in it. For me, that's irrelevant anyway, since I am a one-woman business and have no time at market to make bouquets.

Jeanne

I am particularly attracted to purple and white with purple trim flowers. I was planning one bed just for that color combo. I will grow some plain white with them. I plan on a lot of mixed colors too but purple and white strike my fancy. Does purple and white sell? I like this thread because I have no idea what others would like. My kids seem to like the pastel flowers. Hubby must like purple, white and pastels cause that is what he has in his little flower bed. Yellow isn't a favorite but that said we picked a yellow plant for our easter centerpiece. Shirley

My husband and I have just started selling flowers at our farmers market. We're learning what works and what sells. Brightly colored bouqets are definitely the first to go. Try bright orange and violet zinnias with dark purple hydrangeas. A mix of orange, pink, lavender and lime green zinnias looks wonderful together. I think of a color wheel and use complementary colors to make my bouquets "POP".

We also use the dark sunflowers (moulin rouge) in our bouqets. I like them with light blue hydrangeas and pale yellow sunflowers. Or together with pastel pinks and lavenders.

I love experimenting with new color combinations.