Why Flowers Make Us Happy

Imagine coming home from a long day of work, walking past your dining room table, and collapsing on your sofa, totally exhausted. Now imaging walking past your dining room table and your eyes catching sight of a gorgeous, bright display of flowers. Don’t you immediately feel better seeing those blossoms and blooms? There’s just something about flowers that tend to make us happy and make the worries of the day vanish or at least seem a bit less stressful. But is there any reason why flowers make us happy?

There actually are several reasons. In fact, a scientific study actually discovered that flowers can stimulate our emotions, specifically our happier emotions, and make us feel better. This study, done by Rutgers University, shows that receiving flowers immediately affects people’s moods. They suddenly feel excited, loved, happy, and delighted. The response was the same across all ages involved in the study.

Long term, flowers also had an impact on mood. The more often people saw the flowers, the happier they were overall. Even after a stressful day, seeing flowers can brighten up a person’s mood, especially if the flowers were sent by a close friend or loved one. By connecting flowers to a specific person, all of the emotions that one might feel towards that person are stirred up by seeing the flowers. This is why lovers and spouses traditionally send each other flowers. Seeing those red roses your husband gave you on your birthday reminds you of just how much you love him. Likewise, the congratulations bouquet your girlfriend sends you to your office helps stir up feelings of just how special she is.

So it’s more than just your imagination: it has been scientifically proven that flowers make us happy! Next time you’re feeling down, order yourself a nice bouquet of flowers. You’ll feel better immediately, and every time you see them for the next week or so, you’ll find yourself smiling.