A garland that looks bought and a garland that looks improvised differ in three specific ways, and none of them are about how many balloons you use.

Mix at least three sizes

A garland built from one size reads as a row. The professional look comes from mixing 5, 11 and 16 inch balloons so the outline is irregular and the eye cannot find a repeat.

Roughly half your balloons should be the middle size, a quarter large and a quarter small. The small ones go last, tucked into the gaps the big ones leave.

Use four colours, not two

Pick one dominant colour, two supporting tones close to it, and one accent that is genuinely different. Two colours alternating looks like bunting; four distributed unevenly looks designed.

Double-stuffing — one balloon inside another — is how the soft chalky tones in wedding photography are made. It is a preparation technique rather than a colour you can order off a chart.

Build on a strip, and build it flat

A decorating strip with punched holes lets you push each balloon knot through and slide it along, so the density can be adjusted as you go. Working on the floor before hanging is far easier than working at head height on a ladder.

Glue dots hold the small filler balloons into the gaps. Two people and an hour or two will build several metres, and because it is air-filled there is no clock running while you work.

Order about a third more than the run

A garland that exactly matches the length it is dressing looks thin. Order roughly a third more length than the run for the dense overlapping look most people have in mind when they ask for one.

Tell us the length you are dressing and we will do the counting, and send the balloons pre-counted by size and colour so nothing has to be sorted on site.