What Flowers Should You Send for Sympathy or a Funeral?

For sympathy, send restrained, classic arrangements in white and soft tones: white roses, lilies, hydrangea, chrysanthemums, and orchids. A quiet palette reads as respect, and a vase arrangement from Adore Flowers is usually the more personal choice for a grieving home.

What matters most is that it arrives with care and a few honest words, not that it is grand. This guide covers which stems suit the occasion, whether to send to a home or a service, and what to write on the card.

Which flowers suit a sympathy arrangement?

White roses, lilies, hydrangea, chrysanthemums, and orchids. These stems have carried this meaning for a long time, and they hold their composure in a room where words are hard to find.

• White roses for reverence and remembrance.
• Lilies for peace, and a traditional funeral flower.
• Hydrangea for its soft, full, comforting form.
• Chrysanthemums, long-lasting, and long associated with mourning.
• Orchids for a living plant that endures well beyond the service.

The chrysanthemum association is geographic rather than universal. The New York Botanical Garden notes that some European countries adopted the flower as a symbol of death, using it for funerals and graves. In Japan the same flower sits on the emperor's seal.

You do not have to stay strictly white. Soft greens, pale blush, and muted tones all keep the restraint the occasion asks for. Our sympathy collection is built in exactly that register.

Restraint is not the same as severity. A little movement in the greenery keeps an arrangement from looking like an institution sent it.

Everything we send is made to order the morning it ships, from stems hand-selected at the Los Angeles Flower Market. Each piece is set in a permanent vessel chosen to suit it, so nothing has to be found or filled on arrival.

Should you send flowers to the home or the service?

It depends on what you want the flowers to do. A vase arrangement sent to a home asks nothing of the family: no vase to find, no water to fuss over, no arranging on the worst week of their year.

It also keeps offering comfort for days after the service is over, when the visitors have gone and the house is quiet. That is usually the more personal choice.

A large standing spray is built for a funeral home, where there is floor space and a stand to hold it. In a living room it becomes one more thing the family has to manage.

For a service, send to the funeral home with the family or service name and, where possible, the timing, so it arrives before things begin. Put the service time in the delivery notes at checkout. Our guide to delivering to funeral homes covers the practical details.

What should you write on the card?

Short and sincere is always right. Sincerity matters more than eloquence, and nobody has ever wished a sympathy card were longer.

• "With deepest sympathy. Thinking of you and your family."
• "Holding you close during this difficult time."
• "[Name] will be remembered with so much love."

Every Adore order includes a hand-written note, so your words arrive in ink rather than print. I write them at the bench before the arrangement is wrapped.

If the words will not come, plain beats clever. A line as short as "Thinking of you" has never once looked insufficient at a door.

When should sympathy flowers arrive?

Before the service if they are going to one, and on any day at all if they are going to a home. Order before our 11 AM cutoff, Monday through Saturday, for same-day delivery across Los Angeles.

Deliveries run in two windows, 10 AM to 1 PM and 1 to 5 PM. Same-day orders arrive in the guaranteed 1 to 5 PM window.

Traditions differ, so timing is not one rule. Some faiths welcome flowers at the service. Others prefer donations, or a visit to the home afterward.

A few have specific customs around color or type. When you are unsure, a simple arrangement sent to the home is always considerate.

Related reading

See delivering flowers to funeral homes and services and how same-day delivery works in LA. Our sympathy collection is here when you need it.