How to Press Flowers: 3 Methods, from Heavy Books to the Microwave

June 11, 2026 · 3 min read

Pressing flowers is the oldest trick humans have for arguing with time. A bloom that would have browned in a week gets flattened into something that lasts decades — herbarium sheets from the 1700s still show recognizable color, and most of us have opened a secondhand book and found someone's century-old pansy waiting between the pages. Drying flowers keeps their shape; pressing keeps their face, turned toward you, permanently mid-bloom.

It's also nearly impossible to get wrong, as long as you respect the two enemies: moisture and delay. Press flowers the day you get them, and keep them dry while they flatten. Everything else is technique — and there are three worth knowing.

First: pick flowers that want to be pressed

Flat-faced, thin-petaled flowers press beautifully with no preparation: pansies and violas, daisies, cosmos, larkspur, ferns and leaves of every kind. Small flowers with a single layer of petals are the sure bets.

Thick, dense flowers — roses, peonies, ranunculus — hold too much water to press whole. The trick is to press them petal by petal, or slice the bloom in half lengthwise and press the profile, which looks striking in a frame anyway. And press flowers at their peak or just before, in the morning after the dew has dried; a flower past its best goes into the press disappointed and comes out the same.

Method 1: the heavy book (classic, free, slow)

The way everyone's grandmother did it, and still the best-loved:

Open a big, heavy book you don't mind wrinkling (phone books and old dictionaries retire into this job).
Lay the flower face-down between two sheets of plain paper — parchment, printer paper, or coffee filters. The paper takes the moisture, not the pages.
Arrange the petals exactly as you want them to stay. Whatever position the flower is in now is its position forever.
Close the book, stack more books on top, and put the whole tower somewhere dry.
Wait 2–4 weeks. Change the blotting paper after the first few days if the flowers were juicy. They're done when they feel like paper and lift away cleanly.

Slow, but the color holds and the results are the flattest of any method.

Method 2: a flower press (for repeat offenders)

A proper press — two boards, bolts at the corners, layers of cardboard and blotting paper — is just the book method with even pressure and better airflow, which means less browning and faster drying (one to three weeks). Buy one, or make one in an afternoon from plywood and four bolts. If you press more than a few times a year, this is the upgrade that pays for itself; tightening the wingnuts every few days as the flowers thin is oddly satisfying, like tucking them in.

Method 3: the microwave (for the impatient)

The modern shortcut, and genuinely good: pressure plus brief heat drives the moisture out in minutes instead of weeks, and faster drying often means better color.

Place the flower between two coffee filters or sheets of paper, then between two ceramic tiles (or inside a heavy microwave-safe dish; there are also purpose-made microwave presses).
Microwave in short 30-second bursts on low, checking between bursts and letting everything cool each time.
Stop when the flower is dry but not crisp — usually two to four rounds — then let it finish overnight under a book.

The risk is scorching; the bursts and the cooling are not optional. But for same-day cards and last-minute gifts, nothing else comes close.

What to do with them

Pressed flowers want to be used: framed between two panes of glass, laminated into bookmarks, glued to card stock with a line of the flower's meaning written beneath, sealed under clear phone cases, or scattered through a journal. Handle them with tweezers, glue with tiny dots of PVA, and keep finished pieces out of direct sun — the one thing pressed flowers still fear is fading.

And keep one where you'll find it by accident. The whole point of a pressed flower is the person who opens the book in twenty years.

If you like keeping flowers past their season, that's roughly the founding idea of Bloomette — a hand-painted flower studio for iPhone where every bloom stays at its peak and the arranging never has to end. For the three-dimensional version of this craft, see how to dry flowers.