The 6 Elements of Floral Design: Secondary Focals Have Dual Roles

Hello, flower friends. Secondary focal flowers are shapeshifters, not because their purpose changes, but rather they can play two roles. In one design, a flower can be a focal, and in another design, it can be a secondary focal. The trick is to assign a role to that flower and then design with intentions. By the end of this video, you'll know exactly how to decide if they should be the focal or the secondary and why they can be the missing link between a good arrangement and a great one. In my six elements of design, every stem has a purpose. Secondary focals are face flowers, but they're a little less showy than the classic focal flower. My most popular video, the six elements of design, creates a framework for creating arrangements. In this video, I'm digging deep into secondary focal flowers. Secondary focals are face flowers. So this is a secondary focal. A face flower is a flower that has a single bloom that faces out in the arrangement, but it's usually smaller than the focal flower. So here is a focal flower for a size comparison. This is a peony, and this is a ranunculus. So you can see the difference. A secondary focal comes somewhere in between a focal flower and bits and pieces. This is Crespidia. So a secondary focal really is defined by the flowers around them. It is somewhere in between the largest bloom of the focal and that small little piece of whimsy that you get with your bits and pieces. So if I had a ranunculus and my other flower that I was gonna use was Didiscus, you can see that the ranunculus is bigger, it's more bodacious, it's showier. I would choose this as my focal and the Didiscus as my secondary focal. There are so many flowers that can be used as secondary focals. I have some here today that I wanna show you. One of my favorite summertime secondary focals is Echinacea. There are so many cool new varieties of Echinacea. It's not just the standard pink. Now we're seeing peach and white and all kinds of yellows. This is a great secondary focal. Mini sunflowers, they are also a great secondary focal. They have a big face, but they're small enough that in comparison to something like a peony, they're gonna act as a backup to that peony focal flower. We've got ranunculus, which comes in all different colors and works great in designs. Ranunculus can be a secondary focal to lots of focal flowers, including peonies. And then I've got bachelor's buttons, which come in many different colors as well. The most popular is this blue, but it's also coming in a light pink and a burgundy, which has been really popular with our customers recently. Lace flower is another popular one. Lace flower comes in this really pretty lavender-y purple, but it also comes in a pink and a white. So thinking about flowers that are this shape and this size, something like scabiosa could also be one. Godisha, there's so many. And I'm gonna put a link to my full list of secondary focals that I love using in design in the description so that you can check out my full list. So secondary focal flowers play lots of roles in a design. The first and most important is to bridge the size gap between focals and your bits and pieces. So in this arrangement, I have sunflowers as my focal. But if you pair a focal and a bits and piece right next to each other, it doesn't flow in the arrangement. So the secondary focal is something that you can use to bridge that size gap. So with these Echinacea, so I'm gonna use that to bridge the sunflower and the Crespidia. So you can see now this trio of flowers, a large focal, a medium-sized secondary, and your teeny tiny bits and pieces. The next thing that secondary focals can do in an arrangement is add visual interest. If you made an arrangement of just sunflowers, that would be beautiful, but it would also be a little one-dimensional and a little, I don't wanna say boring, but a little boring. And so the secondary focal really acts as visual interest in your design so that while your focals are playing the major role, this is sort of a secondary place for your eye to look. Another role that the secondary focal plays is to add to the color palette of your arrangement. Now your focal flower, that's gonna add the most color to the design because your focals are your biggest blooms. The interior design idea of 60, 30, 10. 60% is one color. So in this, it would be yellow. That's my focal color. But then 30% is my accent color. I can use my secondary focals. So this has a bit of yellow in it, which actually ties back to the sunflowers, but I'm adding some white. In this arrangement, I have some other whites in here like this Veronica. That adds again to the 60, 30, 10. So 60% yellow, 30% white. That's what it's gonna end up. And maybe a splash of pink is gonna be my 10%. Finally, secondary focals add rhythm and repetition to your design. When you have repeating shapes in your design, so the round face of the sunflower, the round face of the echinacea, and the roundness of your bits and pieces from the Crespidia, you have repetition of shapes and sizes, which is pleasing to the eye. Now here is the thing with secondary focals. Remember I said they're shape shifters. They also need to go into your arrangement at different times depending on the flowers you're using. So in this design, I have already put my filler flowers in. And remember our filler flowers in this case is yarrow. And the filler flowers job is to fill the gap between your focal flowers. So I've put my filler in first and I've added my secondary focal right on top. That's because there was enough space for the filler and my secondary flowers to go in in that order. If your focals were bigger, you would probably want to put your secondary focal in first so that everything doesn't get too crowded with your filler. When you're creating your design, you might be thinking, how do I decide what's a focal and what's a secondary focal? Focal flowers are going to be the largest blooms in your arrangement. So if I'm deciding about my ranunculus and I'm also using peonies, I'm going to use my peony as my focal and my ranunculus as my secondary focal. So is your flower the biggest flower in the design? If it is, it's the focal. If it's not, secondary focal. The next thing to think about is does your flower hold the most visual weight in the design? So when you look at a design, where does your eye first go to and what is the flower that is going to hold your attention the most? In these two examples, the peony is obviously the focal. Your eye is immediately going to go to this peony and it's going to stay there. But your secondary focal can still be a beautiful ranunculus that adds interest and color to your arrangement. Lastly, ask yourself, does the flower that you're choosing create the most color in the design? So if we were using peonies and ranunculus, the peonies, again, clear winner for the focal. They are adding way more color to your design than the ranunculus is. If you enjoyed this video and you want to learn more about secondary focal flowers and all of my six elements of design, check out the description where I'll put a list of all of my favorite secondary focal flowers.