Interior plants

Indoor plants add a breath of fresh air to a room and instantly make it more inviting. They’re the perfect decor piece, no matter your preferred style, and have numerous health benefits for you and your family.

To help you on your way toward including more greenery in your home, we’ve included a list of the most common interior plants so you can take your pick. Furthermore, we’ll discuss how to care about your plants to keep them thriving, and we’ll make a parallel between live and artificial plants. Let’s get to it!

Benefits of Indoor Natural Plants

Apart from creating a green oasis, there are a lot of additional benefits that come from taking care of indoor plants, such as:

• Improving air quality - there are a lot of pollutants nowadays, especially in large cities, and having indoor plants is a great way to increase the amount of fresh oxygen inside your home.
• Improving well-being - plants help us in a lot of different ways. They not only positively affect our mood, but also improve our focus, decrease our blood pressure and cortisol levels, and help us concentrate.
• Reducing stress - plants improve the physiological and psychological stress inside our bodies. Similar to how spending time outdoors has numerous psychological benefits, so does taking care of plants. It’s as if we’re bringing nature into our everyday environment.
• Improving cognitive health - plants can help sharpen our minds, improve our short-term memory, and even help us focus.

Most Common Houseplants

If we’ve managed to convince you how important houseplants are, you’re probably wondering which ones would work best in your home. Here are some of the most popular ones.

Anthurium

Anthuriums are among the easiest houseplants to grow. They're known for their bright red blooms and can produce up to 6 blooms per year. Their flowers are long-lasting but only if you take good care of your plant. These flowers thrive in a warm, bright, and humid environment, so if you follow these guidelines, you’ll have a thriving plant that will bring color into your home and brighten your space.

Croton

If you’re more into interior plants that don’t flower, consider the croton. Even though it doesn’t have any flowers, it’s very colorful. Crotons have big leaves that have red, gold, orange, and purple tones, resembling plants that can be found in a tropical rainforest. These plants love warm and humid environments and are very easy to grow.

Golden Pothos

If you’re into plants that have vine features, you’ll love the pothos plant. The golden pothos has heart-like leaves with specks of cream, yellow, white, or gold. This plant is very low-key and can tolerate a wide range of growing conditions, so if you’re looking for a low maintenance plant, you’ve found it.

Lucky Bamboo

This plant is often given as a gift because it’s said that it brings good luck. The stems of the bamboo are twisted into different shapes, so it’s basically a decorative piece in your home. It doesn’t need a lot of light and you can easily grow it in a vase filled with water.

Peace Lily

The peace lily, also known as Spathiphyllum, is one of the plants that you find in most homes since it’s very easy to grow and filters harmful airborne toxins. This plant is recognized for its white flowers that look similar to callas, but also for its appealing leaves that have a vibrant green color. The peace lily is easy to grow since it can adapt to low, medium, or bright light, but it mostly blooms if it’s exposed to a significant amount of light and a lot of moisture.

Snake Plant

The snake plant is another indoor plant that's very popular for its ability to clean your air. But that’s not all, this plant can be grown by beginners since it doesn’t have preferences in terms of light. When it comes to watering it, you can rest easy because the snake plant won’t mind if you forget to water it for a week or two.

Dracaena Marginata

Dracaena marginata, or Madagascar dragon tree, is an exotic interior plant characterized by bamboo-like stems and thin leaves that stay upright and have purple or pink edges. It’s one of the most interesting plants because it looks like colorful grass. This plant can thrive in low, medium, or bright light, although its leaves are most vibrant in bright light.

How to Use Indoor Plants

After reading all about the different types of interior plants, you may have decided to purchase a bunch of new plants but are unsure where to place them. If you have a smaller room, opt for placing the plants at the perimeter of the room to make the space seem bigger. You can also add your plants that require a lot of light on the windowsill, and hang a few of them in the corners of your room since hanging plants are having a comeback.

Tips to Keep Your Plants Healthy

Interior plants heavily rely on you to take care of them, unlike outdoor plants that don’t require as much care. Next, we’ll cover all you need to do to keep your plants healthy and thriving.

Watering

Indoor plants have different requirements when it comes to how much water they need. This can vary depending on the stages of plant growth, the season, and how humid your home and your environment is overall.

It’s optimal to water them when they need watering instead of working with a schedule, so it’s best to check the soil. If the top cm of the soil is dry, water your plant, and if it’s moist, give it another day or two. As a general guideline, remember that cacti and succulents don’t require a lot of water, whereas flowering plants need a lot more. If you don’t know how much water to put in, always opt for less, rather than more.

Fertilizing

Fertilization depends on the plant’s growth rate and age, but generally, plants need more fertilization in the spring and summer than they do in the winter. Similar to how you wouldn’t overwater your plants, you also shouldn’t overfertilize them because you can stunt their growth, reduce the number of flowers, and even burn their roots.

Propagating

Depending on the types of plants you’re growing, you’ll want to research whether they need to be propagated once in a while. Propagation is necessary for most plants because it rejuvenates the plant while giving you a few additional plants.

Reporting

Every once in a while, your plants will need to be repotted to continue growing, otherwise, they may begin to deteriorate. Check the roots to see if your plant needs a larger pot. While repotting, it’s useful to divide the multiple stems and create new plants, as well as trim some of the roots off with a sharp knife to help them grow better.

Cleaning

Indoor plants need a shower from time to time as opposed to outdoor plants which get regular rainfall. Dust your plants with a soft brush if they have hairy leaves, wash them with a gentle shower, or just gently wipe them with a moist cloth. That not only helps them look good, but it also helps them soak up sunlight more effectively.

Pruning

Pruning interior plants rejuvenates them, similar to propagating. The best time to do this is after their summer growth spurt is done. When pruning, remove dead or diseased leaves to keep your plant healthier for longer, and remove all the stem tips and leaves to encourage the growth of new ones.

Controlling Pests

Indoor plants are often attacked by insects, so helping your plants in the early onset of the infection is crucial. Common pests that can attack your plants include spider mites, aphids, fungus gnats, etc. Invest in a quality insecticidal soap or use rubbing alcohol for insects such as mealybugs.

Watching Out for Diseases

Last but not least, you should regularly check your plants to see whether they have some disease. If that’s the case, remove the diseased leaves to prevent the disease from spreading. Keep an eye out for fungal leaf spots, root rot, powdery mildew, and similar diseases, and learn more about the types of plants you’re growing and the types of diseases you may expect with each.

Artificial vs Natural Interior Plants

If you can’t decide whether to go for artificial or natural plants, consider the following points:

• Whether you like taking care of plants
• Whether you’re traveling often for multiple days, leaving your plants without any care and water
• Whether you have pets that might chew or dig inside the soil of your plants
• Whether you have enough space in your home
• Whether you have enough natural light in your home.

Once you’ve evaluated your lifestyle, you can start evaluating whether you should go with artificial or natural plants. To help you decide, we’ve analyzed the pros and cons of both.

Advantages of Natural Plants

While we’ve discussed most of the advantages of having real plants at the start of this article, let’s just add a few more that might make you lean on the side of natural plants:

• Natural plants can boost your productivity and creativity, similarly as if you were out in nature.
• Indoor plants improve your mental and emotional health.
• Horticultural therapy may benefit conditions such as dementia, depression, and anxiety.
• A lot of plants emit a natural scent that you can’t compare with any air freshener.

Disadvantages of Natural Plants

Even though there are a lot of perks that come with growing plants and flowers at home, there are also a lot of responsibilities that might put people off from growing them. Some of them include the following:

• Indoor plants require care and if you don’t tend to them properly, they wither and die.
• You’ll need to ask someone to take care of your plants each time you take an extended trip.
• It can take a lot of time to take care of your plants if you have many.
• Plants can take up a lot of your space, especially if you live in a small apartment.
• You’re at risk of pests getting inside your home.

Advantages of Artificial Plants

Some people go for artificial plants because they get the visual appeal of having greenery in the room without taking care of it. So let’s see what else you stand to gain if you buy artificial plants:

• You won’t need to care for or water the plants
• Pests that are attracted to plants won’t be a problem in your home
• Faux plants aren’t toxic to pets and children as some plants are
• Artificial plants don’t need to be placed close to the windowsill and don’t need warm temperature
• High-quality artificial plants look quite similar to real plants

Disadvantages of Artificial Plants

If you ask plant lovers, they’ll definitely say that having real plants is much better than artificial ones because of the following reasons:

• Artificial plants don’t have the same health benefits as real plants
• Artificial plants can get quite pricy if they’re of good quality
• Cheap artificial plants tend to look substandard and are more difficult to clean
• Artificial plants don’t improve the quality of your air

Final Thoughts

In the end, whether you decide to go with natural plants or not depends on your lifestyle and preferences. If you feel you’re up for the task, start with one plant, and take it from there.