To celebrate Valentine’s Day, London based designers Bompas & Parr have create several varieties of colour changing flowers. Painted with two different types of thermochromic ink, the colours of the flowers transform in a dramatic way when exposed to temperature changes.With your breath or touch alone, you can trigger the colour change in the ink.

The first ink used is a liquid crystal dye that changes from black to champagne bottle green (in a nod to project collaborator Perrier-Jouët. The second is a black thermochromic dye that changes colour at 31 degrees Celcius. When sprayed with Bompas & Parr’s perfumed crystal elixir and ignited, the blossom changes colour to reveal the original colour. You can watch a video showing how thermochromic ink on a rose reacts here.

The designer explain that the inspiration for these chameleon-like flowers comes from the ‘fin-de-siècle’ (end of the century) french decadence movement.

So if you are looking to impress on Valentine’s Day this weekend, these flowers are “a deluxe, techno-enhanced model of what others will gift on Valentine’s Day”, says Bompas. The flowers are currently on sale until February 14th in London at a pop-up store in the London Edition Hotel.

And you can discover more about thermochromics and other materials, such as thermochromic leathers, in our collection here.