Do you struggle to shop for your best friend, worried about finding the perfect gift? Your bestie deserves the best birthday presents, after all.
Have no fear; The Bouqs Co. is here with plenty of best friend birthday gift ideas! Whether your BFF loves enjoying the great outdoors, looking their best, traveling, watching movies, or anything else, we have ideas to help you celebrate your friendship in style.
Gifts for Best Friends Who Love the Outdoors
Whether it’s hiking, camping, boating, hunting, fishing, rafting, or any other outdoor activity, if your best buddy loves being outdoors, they may like these gifts.
ISDIN Eryfotona Actinica Sunscreen
Everybody who spends significant time outdoors should use high-quality sunscreen. Not only is ISDIN Eryfotona Actinica Sunscreen water-resistant, SPF 50+, and ultralight, but it’s been clinically proven to repair existing sun damage, making it the perfect gift for your fresh air-loving friend.
Take Them on a Glamping Trip
If roughing it isn’t your idea of fun but it’s your bestie’s favorite thing, meet them in the middle and treat them to a glamping trip you’ll both enjoy. Under Canvas offers glamping in 10 stunning locations around the United States. Your friend gets to explore nature;, you get flushing toilets and hot showers. Both of you get the unforgettable memories of an adventure.
Bose Audio Sunglasses
Two words for you: Audio Sunglasses. With these, your best friend can listen to their favorite tunes or podcast while still being able to hear the world around them and ALSO protecting their eyes from the sun. With several different styles to choose from, you can even orderthem with prescription lenses.
Depending on the style, the battery can last up to 5.5 or 8 hours. And hey, even if the tunes are lost due to a dead battery, they still function as sunglasses.
Personalized Birthday Gifts
Your friend is one of a kind, and their gift should be as unique as they are! Personalized birthday gifts ensure you get your bud something they don’t already have.
Customized Friendship Rings or Bracelets
Especially poignant if your bestie doesn’t live in the same city as you, customized friendship rings or bracelets are a unique way for you and your friend to remember each other when you’re apart. You can get two of the same ring style, personalized to each of your tastes, with your names, astrological signs, coordinates of an important place to you, or any number of other things engraved on one or both sides of the ring or bracelet.
Etsy has many excellent options to choose from.
DivvyUp Custom Socks
With DivvyUp Custom Socks, you can upload a pic of your best friend’s favorite animal and have their furry, feathery, or scaly face printed on custom socks. If your friend doesn’t have a pet, you can give them socks with YOUR face printed on them, instead!
You can add up to 3 (human or animal) faces per pair of socks and choose from 14 colors and 4 sizes. Actually, DivvyUp has a huge range of customizable socks, making them a unique gift for anybody.
Laser Engraved Photo
The best way for your friend to keep a photo of the two of you isn’t on a computer, on a phone, saved to the cloud, or printed on paper – it’s laser engraved into crystal. From a small keychain or necklace pendant to a large, show-stopping piece of home decor, there’s a piece your friend will treasure for a lifetime. Some designs are even 3D for a truly spectacular effect.
Makeup Gifts
Thanks to tutorials on YouTube and TikTok, makeup is more popular than ever. Whether your friend does their makeup daily or just for special occasions, consider giving them one of these gifts.
Colourpop Fade Into Hue Eyeshadow Palette
If your friend loves to express their personal style through vibrant eye shadow colors, they’ll adore the Colourpop Fade Into Hue Eyeshadow Palette. Pastel, bold, matte, or glittery, this palette has it all in shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple! This pallette was an Allure Best of Beauty Award Winner in 2021.
Sephora Vacay All Day All-Over Face Set
Every makeup enthusiast needs a good set of face products, and the Sephora Vacay All Day All-Over Face Set combines a little bit of everything for your bestie: primer, setting spray, styling cream, eye cream, lip gloss, body lotion, mascara, sunscreen, tanning drops, and Niacinamide Dew Drops, all in a handy tote bag.
Custom Lip Stick
What could be more awesome than giving your friend the chance to create their own lipstick? With a gift card from Bite’s Lip Lab, your friend can make an appointment for an online or in-store appointment to customize their own lipstick shade, choose a finish, add a flavor, then name it and engrave it.
Presents for Best Friends Who Love Happy Hour
Is your friend the life of the party? Help them live it up with these gift ideas.
Winc Wine Club Subscription
Vino lovers would be thrilled to receive a gift card for a subscription to Winc Wine Club. Your best friend will take a short quiz, answer a few questions, then receive 4 bottles of delicious wine each month. Then, they’ll rate each wine to keep getting varieties that best match their taste.
If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll share with you.
Take a Mixology Class Together
Does your friend always play bartender when you come over? Elevate the fun and take an online mixology class together, like these offered by Cozymeal. More than just a YouTube video, online mixology classes offer fully interactive experiences. They provide you all the benefits of going to a class in person while still staying at home.
Travel Aficionado Presents
If your friend embraces the jet-set lifestyle, these gift ideas are just the thing for their next adventure.
Ostrichpillow Light Versatile Travel Pillow
Unlike most travel pillows, the Ostrichpillow Light Versatile Travel Pillow is multifunctional. It doesn’t just support your neck for sleeping upright; you can also use it as an eye mask to block out light or slip it around your head to give you cushioning as you lean against a plane or train window. This pillow is also reportedly excellent for migraines.
LifeStraw Filtered Water Bottle
Help your friend avoid making the decision between buying bottled water and risking “Montezuma’s Revenge” or “Delhi Belly” by giving them a LifeStraw Filtered Water Bottle. Available in a variety of colors, shapes, sizes, and styles, this water bottle removes 99.9% of waterborne parasites and bacteria from drinking water in places where you can’t be certain about the water quality.
Gifts for Game-Playing Friends
Board games. Card games. Party games. Outdoor games. Video games. Virtual reality. LARPing. Whatever types of games your best bud adores, you can boost their collection with one of these items.
Sondergut Roll-up Travel Game Backgammon
Board games tend to be bulky, but Sondergut Roll-up Travel Game Backgammon rolls up into a 10” by 2” shape the size of a travel umbrella. The soft leather “board” also features a zippered compartment to hold the dice, double cube, and the playing stones, so nothing gets left behind when your friend brings this game traveling, camping, to the beach, or to a party.
Stars of Akarios Game
If your friend loves space or science fiction, Stars of Akarios makes a perfect gift. While we know friends never let friends play games alone, Stars of Akarios can be played with as few as one person or can accommodate up to 4 players. Highly rated on Board Game Geek, Stars of Akarios is a narrative-driven, cooperative campaign game set in the Akarios Galaxy, where you will fight in epic space battles, upgrade your ship, and explore the fringes of space.
Film Buff Gifts for Your Best Friend
Does your friend know the Criterion Collection by heart? Do they hit the theater every weekend to catch new releases? Check out these perfect gifts for film enthusiasts.
100 Movies Scratch Off Poster
If your best friend always talks about the latest films, give them a chance to show off just how many they’ve seen with this 100 Movies Scratch Off Poster found on Uncommon Goods. For every movie they’ve watched, they get to scratch to see film-related art underneath. Trying to scratch off all 100 movies will keep them busy picking the titles on your movie nights for a while!
“Eat What You Watch” Cookbook
Many people have more than one hobby. If your best friend loves both cooking and watching movies, they’ll love the “Eat What You Watch” Cookbook. It includes recipes from movies like Ratatouille, When Harry Met Sally, Chocolat, Julie & Julia, Kramer vs Kramer, Annie Hall, Saturday Night Fever, The Gold Rush, Big Night, Sixteen Candles, Pretty Woman, Elf, Tampopo, Chef, Jurassic Park, Goodfellas, and Spanglish.
Gifts for Friends Who Favor Flowers
Flowers don’t have to be romantic – they make excellent birthday gifts for your friends! Choose their favorite bloom, their birth month flower, or an arrangement in a color they adore. Either way, your pal is sure to be thrilled with happy birthday flowers!
Dried Bouquet
For the friend who adores decorating with flowers but doesn’t have time to care for fresh-cut blooms, consider sending them a bouquet of dried flowers. Featuring gold pampas and white loofahs, the Four Seasons is an excellent choice for a friend’s birthday. Its natural tones will match a variety of decor styles, and since it isn’t pink or red, you won’t accidentally be sending a romantic message to your bestie.
Flower Subscription
If your best bud truly adores flowers, what could be better than gifting them a flower subscription so they can receive beautiful bouquets as often as every week or as little as every other month? In fact, wouldn’t it be amazing to automatically send your friend a stunning arrangement every month?
A Bouqs subscription offers flexible delivery dates, access to a curated collection of Bouqs from eco-friendly farms, discounts on one-time orders, free shipping, and more.
Female Form Vase
Where is your friend supposed to put all those flowers? How about this Female Form Vase from Urban Outfitters? Available in 4 different skin tone colors, this vase also functions as a work of art and a potential talking point for when your friend has company.
Presents for Your Long-Distance Bestie
They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. If that’s the case with you and your best friend, consider giving them one of these for their birthday this year.
Friendship Lamps
Easily let your bestie know you’re thinking of them by getting Friendship Lamps. No matter how far apart you are, you and your friend can connect each of your lamps to Wi-Fi and the LuvLink™ App. Choose a color, touch your lamp, and your bud’s lamp will light up in that color.
With the ability to add unlimited lamps to the same network and 10 different light colors to choose from, you can give a lamp to all your friends and have each person pick their own color (so everybody will know who the tap is from). Or, you and your bestie can create your own color code – maybe pink means “I miss you,” while green means “I made it home safely.”
Bond Touch Bracelets
Do you wish you could let your friend know you’re thinking of them with just a tap of your finger? Now you can! With Bond Touch Bracelets, you can tap a pattern on your bracelet, and your friend’s bracelet will vibrate in that pattern and light up with the color you choose in the Bond Touch App. Whether you’re in class, in a meeting, in bed, taking a shower, or watching a movie, you can let your friend know they’re on your mind without needing your phone – and they can “touch” you back!
The new Bond Touch More allows you to connect up to 4 bracelets in total (the original only allows 2 bracelets to connect with each other), so you can get several of your friends the same gift.
Friendship Gift Box
Who doesn’t love receiving an unexpected gift box full of goodies? You can create the perfect present by including all of your bestie’s favorite things such as body butter, a bath bomb, a sleep mask, candles with delicious scents, snacks, books, or anything else.
Don’t have time to put together a box yourself? You can find many great gift sets on Etsy.
Belated Birthday Gifts
It happens to all of us – time seems to run away with you, and you forget an important birthday. When you need gifts for a forgotten birthday, turn to these ideas.
Sunflowers
What better way to tell your friend how much they light up your life – and apologize for missing their birthday – than with vivid sunflowers? Vibrance combines purple asters and green eucalyptus with vibrant yellow sunflowers that seem to shout, “I’m happy you’re alive! Happy birthday, and please forgive me.” It’s hard to frown at sunflowers, making them an excellent belated birthday gift.
And, if you order by noon in your friend’s time zone, these bright blooms can reach your friend as soon as the same day.
A Hand-Written Letter
Is there anything more personal in today’s digital world than a hand-written letter? Go all-in by using colorful ink on fancy stationery. You can apologize for missing their birthday, ask for forgiveness, and wish them birthday love all in one letter at a low cost to you, and it’s something your best friend may keep and treasure for years to come.
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