Bedroom plants - which ones survive the light you have
Which bedroom plants last in a room with the blind half down, what they really do to the air, and whether it is a good idea to sleep next to one.
The snake plant, pothos, the ZZ plant and the cast iron plant are the bedroom plants that last in a typical bedroom. Among indoor bedroom plants, what decides it is the daylight the room gets with the blind where you usually leave it. That is often less than it looks, because the bedroom tends to be the dimmest room in the home.
The best plants for a bedroom, and what they share
The best plants for bedroom conditions are the snake plant, pothos, the cast iron plant and the ZZ plant. What they share is that they tolerate a dim spot and a missed watering. Tolerating means staying alive, while growing means putting out new leaves as big as the old ones. The table sorts them by that difference.
Among the best indoor plants for bedroom corners, the ZZ plant copes with the same shade and even more neglect, because it stores water in its rhizomes. It does not appear in the ASPCA toxicity database, so it has no row in the table, whose last column comes only from that database.
Lavender and aloe turn up on plenty of lists of good plants for bedroom use, and both struggle in one. They want several hours of direct sun a day, which a room with the blind half down does not give them. If you like the look of a sun plant, the Snake plant takes anything from shade to direct sun.
Which of these are the best plants for your bedroom depends on the room. If the room is dim and you forget to water, take the snake plant or pothos. If the blind goes up in the morning and the window is close, the whole table works. So does much of the plant care guide that asks for bright indirect light.
What bedroom air purifying plants actually remove
Bedroom air purifying plants remove almost nothing at the scale of a real bedroom. The claim rests on tests that sealed a plant inside a chamber for hours or days. A bedroom swaps its air with the rest of the home and the outdoors far faster than a plant can take anything out of it.
Most lists of air purifying plants for bedroom use trace back to a 1989 NASA report, run in sealed chambers of less than one cubic metre. It measured how much of several solvents different species removed, because NASA was looking for ways to clean the air in closed space habitats. The Peace lily was one of the plants tested.
A 2019 peer-reviewed analysis recalculated twelve of those chamber studies against the ventilation of a real building. It found you would need between 10 and 1,000 plants per square metre of floor to match what ordinary air exchange with the outdoors already does. Choose plants to keep in bedroom corners for how they look, and open the window for a few minutes when you want cleaner air.
Plants for bedroom oxygen at night
No plant adds oxygen to a bedroom at night, because oxygen comes from photosynthesis and photosynthesis needs light. The lists of the best plants for bedroom oxygen lead with the snake plant and aloe, and those two do the opposite in the dark. They open their pores at night, take in carbon dioxide and store it for the next day.
That is crassulacean acid metabolism, a drought adaptation that lets the plant keep its pores shut through the heat of the day and lose less water. It is also part of why these two cope with a missed watering. The amount of gas one pot moves is tiny next to what you breathe in a night, so it does nothing you would notice in the room.
Should you sleep with plants in your bedroom
Yes, you can sleep with plants in your bedroom, and the carbon dioxide worry behind the question is out of proportion. At night a plant respires like anything alive and gives off a little carbon dioxide, far less than another person or a dog asleep in the same room.
What actually goes wrong with plants in the bedroom is two things. The first is a species within reach of a cat or a small child, like a pothos on a low shelf. The second is fungus gnats breeding in a pot that stays damp in a dim, still room. Before a plant goes in, check three things.
- Who can reach it. If you have a cat, a dog or a small child, look the species up in the ASPCA list of toxic plants before you buy it. A cat reaches a high shelf too.
- How long the pot stays wet. In low light the substrate dries slowly, and wet substrate is where fungus gnat larvae live. Let the top layer dry between waterings and empty the saucer.
- Whether you can water it without moving anything. If watering means standing on something or pulling out a piece of furniture, the plant will get less water than it needs. Put it where you can reach it with a watering can while standing on the floor.
Plants for a dark bedroom, and what they give up
Plants for dark bedroom corners stay alive and give up most of their growth. The room is often darker than you think. The blind spends much of the day part way down, and bedrooms tend to face the quiet side of the building.
The one-minute check is the shadow your hand casts at midday, with the blind where you usually leave it. If the shadow is faint or missing, you are in the territory of low light houseplants. Then the low light plants for bedroom corners come down to the snake plant, the ZZ plant and the cast iron plant.
A room where the blind stays down all morning is a different room from one where it goes up at eight, and the table changes with it. Low light bedroom plants that sit in too little light show it within months. New leaves come in smaller than the old ones and the bare stretch of stem between them gets longer.
Feng shui plants in the bedroom
Feng shui has rules for bedroom plants, and they are about shape and placement more than species. The tradition prefers rounded leaves to spiky ones, keeps plants away from the head of the bed and wants nothing dying in the room.
Two of those three rules also describe good practice for the plant. The head of the bed is usually against the wall furthest from the window, which is the dimmest spot in the room. A plant fading in a dark corner needs more light. If you follow both rules with feng shui bedroom plants, you move them out of the gloom and towards the light they need.
A bedroom with plants: where they actually go
In a bedroom with plants, the question is which surface you can give up, and the answer is usually none. That is why it pays to choose the spot before choosing the best plants for the bedroom, and to count the wall as a spot.
- The nightstand. You reach it without getting up, but it is usually the darkest corner, because the bed rarely sits by the window. Small plants for bedroom nightstands have to be the toughest ones, like a snake plant.
- The floor. It costs the most space and gets the least light, unless the pot is right by the window.
- A shelf or the top of the wardrobe. It keeps the floor clear, but you cannot water it without standing on something, and a plant you cannot reach gets forgotten.
- The wall. It frees the floor and puts the plant at eye level, which in a dim room is where the light is. In a modern bedroom with plants it also keeps every surface clear.
Hanging plants for bedroom shelves and hooks save floor space, because they trail over the edge instead of sitting deep. Pothos is one of the hanging plants indoor that keeps trailing in low light, so it suits a bedroom shelf.
A wall piece with a planting pocket, like the Living Canvas, hangs by a slot near its top on one wall hook, so you drill one hole. Planted and watered, it is in the same order of weight as a framed picture you already have on the wall.
Plasterboard needs an expanding plug, brick takes a standard one, and a tiled wall needs a different drill bit. Hang it at eye level or a little below, on the wall nearest the window, following the mounting guide.
Tall bedroom plants when the floor is already full
Tall bedroom plants only work against the wall the bed is not on, so they do not narrow the way round the bed. They grow slowly in a room this dim, so buy one at the size you want it. The tall plants for bedroom corners that grow upwards rather than outwards are the snake plant and the cast iron plant.
What we checked about bedroom plants
This page rests on two things. What university extension services publish about light and watering, together with a peer-reviewed analysis of plants and indoor air, each linked where it is used. And the board and pocket measurements, taken off the piece. What we have not measured is marked as such.
Conclusion - bedroom plants
Stand in the bedroom at midday with the blind where you normally leave it and answer two questions. Can you see the window from the spot you have in mind? Can you reach that spot with a watering can without standing on anything? Two yeses and most of the table works. One no, and change the spot before you choose the plant.
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