How to Choose the Best Indoor Plants

Choosing the right houseplant for your home needs careful consideration if you want it to live forever. Despite plants’ ability to survive easily in their natural habitats, bringing them indoors has its challenges. Lighting, spacing, humidity, and climate are just some of the things that can affect how well your houseplant lives. Keep reading to learn how to choose the best indoor plants for your home and discover our top 10 low maintenance houseplants for beginners. 


How to Choose the Best Indoor Plant For Your Home: 7 Things to Consider

Choosing the best indoor plants for your home is about more than just aesthetics (although their appearance is an important factor!). Some plants are easy to care for and will thrive in your living space, while others will be totally unsuitable. Here are the most important things to consider before choosing the best indoor plant for your environment.   

Lighting

Adequate lighting is the most important thing you need to consider before choosing the best houseplant for your home. Poor sunlight conditions can quickly cause your houseplant to die. If the light is too bright or direct, they can burn, lose their leaves, or dry out (source). In low light, their leaves can fade, wilt, turn brown, or fall off completely (source). You can easily increase the lighting in dark corners of your home with indoor grow lights.

Space

Houseplants come in all shapes and sizes. Establishing how much space you have for a houseplant is also very important. Small indoor plants, like succulents, won’t grow more than a few inches (source), so you can find room for them anywhere. Whereas plants like Monsteras will grow and grow (source)! Remember, houseplants will only grow as large as their pot, but you still shouldn’t keep them in the same pot for too long, as they can become root bound.

Humidity

Creating the right humidity is important for some indoor plants to survive. Since most houseplants originate from warm climates, many require medium to high humidity to live well. Without it, they can wilt or stunt growth. Bathrooms and kitchens are naturally humid areas, but you can create humidity anywhere indoors with a humidifier.

Climate

Similar to how some houseplants need high humidity, most indoor plants need a certain temperature to survive. If your home is too warm or too cold, it can impact how well your plant grows and whether it lives at all. This is something you’ll need to monitor throughout the seasons too, as some plants need to be kept warm in winter or away from direct heat during summer. Choosing an easy-going, low maintenance houseplant is a good idea if you don’t want to monitor surrounding temperatures constantly.

Difficulty to Care For

You’d think all plants are easy to care for. After all, all you need to do is water them, right? Wrong! Houseplants are fickle things and, despite their ability to survive perfectly fine outdoors in their natural climate, bringing them indoors has its challenges. Even easy houseplants need routine fertilization, careful watering schedules, and adequate sunlight conditions. But some indoor plants are renowned for their difficulty and aren’t a good choice if you’re a beginner or want a low maintenance plant.

Pests & Diseases

Many indoor plants are prone to certain pests and diseases. Some pests are unavoidable for all plants (like the dreaded fungal gnat!) and anything can get root rot if you overwater it. But many plants need careful attention to prevent certain diseases. For example, Orchids are highly prone to leaf spot fungus (source), while succulents can easily develop powdery mildew (source). Most diseases are easy to treat, but it’s still not ideal if you’re looking for a low maintenance indoor plant!

Special Requirements

Most houseplants are relatively easy to care for and don’t have any unusually special requirements. However, many popular indoor plants are extremely fussy and require extra attention to survive indoors. For example, the Venus flytrap must only be watered with fresh rainwater (source), while the azalea needs vinegar-diluted water to keep the soil acidic (source)

 

8 Easy Houseplants Anyone Can Grow

Finding the right plant for you depends on how much maintenance you’re prepared to do when looking after your plant. When you’re a beginner to plant parenthood, you should try to find a low maintenance houseplant. This way, you’ll be able to get used to caring for an easy plant before owning something more complicated. Here are our top 8 picks of easy houseplants anyone can grow, no matter where you are in your plant parent journey!

Snake Plant

Snake plants, also known as Sansevieria, are highly popular with beginner plant parents. These desert plants are some of the most resilient indoor plants you can own. It’s almost impossible to kill these houseplants. They aren’t sensitive to overwatering, they don’t need regular fertilization, and they can survive in any light conditions, even extremely low light.

Spider Plant

Another low maintenance houseplant that’s hard to kill is the spider plant. It can survive in low light or a bright, sunny window ledge and retains water very well. So, you can position it almost anywhere in your home and won’t need to worry about watering it every week. They also grow fast and can easily be propagated to create new houseplants.

Pothos

Pothos is a beautiful hanging houseplant that can be left to trail off a bookshelf or wrapped around a moss pole to create a freestanding corner plant. It’s very forgiving and can tolerate both low and bright light. You’ll just need to be careful not to overwater it, as it prefers minimal watering when the top 1-3 inches of soil have dried out.

Jade Plant

Jade plants are often small with thick, round leaves. Because their leaves store water for long periods, they can go between 1-2 months without water. They love a bright, sunny position (like a window ledge) or an area with a bright LED grow light.

Monstera

Monsteras are one of the fastest-growing houseplants you can get. In the right conditions, they can grow as tall as 10-15 feet and 8 feet wide (source)! Being native to warm conditions, they like moderate warmth, some humidity, and bright, indirect light to thrive. If your plant doesn’t get enough humidity, infrequent misting of the aerial roots can promote additional growth and help it grow outwards as well as upwards (source).

ZZ Plants

ZZ plants, also known as Zamioculcas Zamiifolia, are very easy to care for. These low maintenance indoor plants can survive in low or bright light with any humidity. They don’t need to be watered much either, as they prefer light, infrequent watering once the soil has dried out.

Money Tree Plant

Another stunning low maintenance houseplant is the lucky money tree plant! Able to survive any bright, indirect sunlight conditions, or live next to an LED grow light, you can keep this plant almost anywhere in your home. If you often forget to water your plants, or go on long vacations away, your plant can survive minimal, infrequent watering easily. In fact, it prefers it!

String of Hearts

String of hearts is an adorable plant species. Their heart-shaped leaves suit any interior décor beautifully. But the best thing about these petite trailing plants is their low maintenance care needs! They prefer bright, indirect sunlight (from a natural source or an indoor grow light) and can survive severe neglect when it comes to watering.