2026 Pantone Colour of the Year; Wedding Florals in Southern Ontario
The ‘colour’ that has set the tongues wagging in disdain is a longstanding workhorse for both landscape and wedding florals. We’re diving into how you can apply it in fresh ways that will define your 2026 weddings and how to adapt them for intimate backyard celebrations.
Weddings are an opportunity to share with your circle your tastes, values, priorities and interests. Some may have dreamed of these details for years and know exactly what they want or they have family expectations and traditions that will be implemented. Then there are couples who are so excited for the marriage but may not have a clue as to what they want for the wedding and so they look to existing weddings and trends for inspiration, hoping to uncover their own unique style for their special day.
Colour is often one of the first elements that is selected for a wedding and the trends for this ebb and flow over the years. This is an opportunity to display your favourite hue en masse, a chance to embrace many colours or make a statement with a lack of colour (looking at you, all white weddings). Colour also leads many trends throughout the design world, from fashion to home decor as well as event decor and floral design. There are the ‘colour guru’s’ who scour the global trends and then present to us the tone that they believe we should coat our environments in.
And for 2026, Pantone’s colour of the year, is white: “Cloud Dancer” (PANTONE 11-4201).
White is trending… for a wedding, how unoriginal you may think.
While the majority of the opinion pieces that came out upon this announcement are up in arms over the very lack of colour for the ‘colour of the year’, I found the reasoning to be rather fitting from the perspective of planning a wedding.
Weddings are an opportunity to showcase themes and elements of your life that you love but this can often swing into extremes where every single element is themed and the focus and reason for the day becomes lost to the theme. In the design world ‘white space’ or ‘negative space’ gives the other design elements chance to breathe and truly shine. They are the lawn to the garden beds, the foliage to the focal flowers, the matting to the art. And this colour (or lack of) gives that same support to your own wedding florals.
In 2026 you can be traditional, modern and perfectly on trend all at the same time, by sticking with white.
So how can you apply the 2026 Colour of the Year to your own wedding florals without it feeling too typical and not reflective of you?
All White Florals; No Greenery
Certainly not a new or ground breaking concept, but one that is often avoided due to the cost. Greenery = Filler, Filler = more volume for less coin. Bigger arrangements, more mass, and a larger scale can be achieved at a more palatable price point when using greenery. Greenery also acts as that ‘white space’, allowing the form of each focal flower to really shine.
There are many couples who are not fans of greenery or filler but they struggle with their design choices not looking chaotic or messy, instead of intentional, because the eye lacks a place to rest and pause while taking in the scene. Outdoor or backyard weddings can occasionally feel like the greenery in floral design ends up blending into the natural setting too much.
If this situation is one that you face, you can utilize white florals as the backdrop to create the structure and scale to then support the pops of interest in either a colour, texture or other element in your florals.
If your venue has a lot of textures, colours or other competing elements that may conflict with the colour palette you wanted for the wedding, this all white floral direction will play nicely with everybody and allow your other creative elements the opportunity to shine.
Colourful Tablecloth and White florals
The visual real estate that fabrics can cover in weddings are vast which allows them to create that neutral backdrop in the standard white that you typically would see. If you begin to bring them up into vertical draping or canopies their impact can stretch even further. Their use is often reserved to tables in small or backyard weddings; often being necessary to cover the less aesthetic rental tables.
White linens are the most common for the very reasons that Pantone chose a white colour for 2026, or an art gallery has white walls. It is far less common to infuse the table cloth with the colour, reserving those applications for napkins, chargers or the florals. This is a great way to impart a bold design choice. Whether a pattern or a solid, a draped gauzy runner or a sheer overlay, there are many creative directions one can take to infuse their personality into the tablescape. The florals could be matched to the linens hue, or a complimentary colour, or they can pop with a contrasting, crisp elegance in a quiet, yet strong white.
Plan(t) for the Future
Many families having backyard weddings want to grow their own flowers for the day. Often the wedding is happening on a family members property and perhaps your wedding colour scheme and how they would design their gardens don’t quite align. Most cut flowers are annuals, but if you are opting to add perennials to the space to enhance the floral atmosphere, then woody or herbaceous shrubs with white blooms are usually going to fit for both the wedding event and the long term enjoyment of the property.
Tones and vibrancy of flowers can vary drastically and if you are not buying the plant while it is in bloom, it may not reflect the colours on a website or label quite like you hoped. White is the one bloom colour that does not usually face this issue. Remember that perennials take time to establish and may not bloom to their full potential for the first 1-2 years, which is why annuals are so attractive for cut florals.
The team at Pantone was right when they described how their white ‘Cloud Dancer’ will adapt and harmonize with others. In a landscaped garden setting this is especially true. For wedding florals, it is a timeless, well tested truth.
Seasonal, locally grown, white florals you can use for a small or backyard wedding in Southern Ontario:
May
Daffodils
Tulips
Hyacinths
Pin Cherry Tree
Apple Tree
June
Saponaria
Peony
Ranunculus
Anemone
Snapdragon
Stock
Feverfew
Mock Orange
July
Yarrow
Feverfew
Snapdragons
Sweet Peas
Campanula
Scabiosa
Strawflower
Zinnia’s
Dahlia’s
Sunflowers
August
Hydrangea
Queen Anne’s Lace
Scabiosa
Snapdragons
Strawflower
Zinnia’s
Dahlia’s
Winged Everlasting
Cosmos
Sunflowers
Lisianthus
September
Zinnia’s
Strawflower
Dahlia’s
Cosmos
Feverfew
Snapdragons
Sunflowers
Winged Everlasting
October
Strawflower
Dahlia’s
Snapdragons
Stock
As a flower farmer located on the border of North Oshawa and Clarington, in Durham Region, these are all flowers that we typically grow for our customers each year. If you are looking to supplement your own home grown flowers, or source them all, we’d love to be a part of bringing your vision to life. You can view our services here, and can contact us here to discuss further.
2026 is the year where you can embrace being timeless, classic, contemporary and trendy all in one swoop thanks to the most recent Pantone colour of the year, ‘Cloud Dancer’. It can be a supporting element or the feature focus in your wedding florals and is easily the most flexible trending ‘colour’ to have ever been proposed in the 26 years since the colour of the year projections began.
