There are so many wonderful benefits to filling your home with indoor houseplants. Adding greenery around your home can help filter the air, add aesthetic appeal, and just bring you joy.
But with so many choices, how do you choose the right ones? Just like outdoor plants, you likely know that certain options are going to perform better than others. But what factors do you need to consider when looking at plants for indoors?
In this article, we’ve rounded up some helpful tips for choosing indoor plants including what factors are important to consider. We’ll also share some of our top picks for indoor planting options.
Choosing Indoor House Plants: What to Consider
When buying an indoor plant for your Bozeman, MT home or office, sometimes people want to simplify the process by simply choosing something that looks nice. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Just like outdoor plants, there are factors that need to be considered in order to find plants that are going to thrive in your home.
Here’s what you need to consider.
Your Home’s Conditions
When buying an indoor plant you need to consider the conditions in which it will live.
The main three factors are sunlight, temperature, and humidity.
Just like outside, there are going to be some plants that require more sunlight than others. You have to think about the lighting conditions of a room before you can choose which plants will perform best in it.
The same goes for temperature.
During colder months, sudden drops in temperature can be difficult for certain houseplants. When thinking about plants for indoors, you should consider whether you have the right room temperatures for certain species to perform their best. If you have a vacation home and it gets very chilly when you’re away, plants might struggle.
As far as humidity, it’s important to have some sense of the moisture levels in your air and whether these conditions are right for the houseplant you’re considering. Plants need moisture and may require extra watering during certain times of the year.
Also, the forced air that comes with heating a home in the winter can often make conditions unfavorable for many indoor plants. Keeping plants away from vents can protect them from excessive heat or dry air.
Ultimately with all three factors (temperature, lighting, and humidity), it’s important to weigh your home’s conditions with the plants’ needs. Naturally, some plants for indoors will be better fits than others.
Pets
Another big consideration that comes up in choosing plants for indoors is whether or not there are pets in the house. Certain plants can be harmful (even poisonous) to dogs and cats if ingested—or sometimes even just touched!
When homeowners shop for plants on their own, they sometimes forget to take this vital consideration into account but it’s a detail that should not be overlooked. You should know whether a plant is toxic to pets before bringing it into your home.
Available Space
Depending upon how fast-growing a certain houseplant may be, it could outgrow the space you have planned for it in less time than you might have imagined.
When choosing plants for indoors people commonly forget that the plant isn’t going to stay that size forever. It will be beneficial to think more long-term and consider whether you actually have the space for the species you’re considering.
Your Personal Preferences, Style, and Taste
Once these other factors have been considered, you’ll of course want to also choose houseplants that meet your personal preferences.
As you think about which houseplants might work best for your home, you should also consider your personal wants and needs.
- Are you looking at adding mostly greenery or do you want something that flowers?
- Are you looking for something with a certain size of leaves?
- Is there a certain size plant you are looking for? Are you looking for something in a window or on the floor? (Keeping in mind that the size will change)
Plants for Indoors: Our Top Picks
Now that you know there’s a bit more to plant selection than you might have considered, you may be wondering what some of your options are.
We’ve compiled a list of what we’d say are some of our clients’ favorite houseplants. Again, in deciding whether these are right for you, you should consider some of the factors we discussed above.
Dracaena Plants
There are many different varieties of the dracaena plant, most of which seem to perform really well indoors. Most dracaena varieties prefer bright, indirect sunlight. It’s an attractive plant with large, sword-like leaves that will make a lovely statement.
Pothos Plants
Pothos plants can be a great indoor addition because they can tolerate low light relatively well. It’s a low-maintenance plant that has been called one of the easiest to care for and grow.
Philodendron Plants
This is a large genus of flowering plants and is popular due to its overall ability to perform well inside. The plants in this group offer gorgeous foliage and can be a wonderful aesthetic addition.
Ficus Plants
There are many indoor varieties of the ficus plant that make a nice addition. These include the fiddle-leaf fig, the Audrey ficus, and the weeping fig. Most of the ficus plants enjoy bright indirect or filtered light.
Succulents
Succulents are also incredibly popular right now as they can be arranged in many beautiful ways. These indoor plants are also incredibly low maintenance due to their extreme drought tolerance.
Living Walls
Another unique option that many of our interior plantscape clients have been interested in is the “living wall.” This is basically a “picture frame of plants” and can be hung on any wall to add greenery and brighten a room. A living wall can have a water reservoir and take care of itself making it maintenance-free during that time.
Choosing Indoor House AddPlants: Leaving it to a Pro
Now that we’ve provided some factors to consider when choosing indoor plants for your home, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed. You know there are so many different houseplants out there and you likely have some sense of what you want, but you want to make sure it’s going to perform well in your home.
Well, instead of trying to figure this all out, you could instead hand indoor planting services over to a pro.
That means instead of having to be the one to go out and make selections that are going to work well, you can tell the professional what you’re looking for and leave it to them to choose the best indoor plants.
An added benefit to this is that a professional is likely to have a lot more access to plants than the average homeowner. At Blanchford Landscape Group, we have access to some unique plant material that you would not likely find at your local big-box store.
If you’re looking for something large or something tropical, we can bring that in. We are also building up our own in-house nursery and greenhouse so that we always have plant material in stock for quick swap-outs that might be needed when a plant is underperforming.
The fact is, some houseplants, particularly the tropical variety, can’t perform well forever in a regular home—they need the intense access to sunlight and humidity that a greenhouse offers. But we could install a tropical plant for you to enjoy as long as possible and then swap it out as needed (returning the other to the greenhouse to nurse back into top health).
Since so many of our clients are also vacation or second-homeowners, they might not be in town long enough for it to make sense to invest in lots of houseplants. But we can bring in what they want while they’re here to be enjoyed during their stay.
Choosing Interiorscapes by Blanchford Landscape for Indoor Planting Services
If you’re thinking about everything involved in choosing indoor plants, you might want to think about handing these services over to a pro so that you can eliminate any of the hassles or headaches associated with houseplants and instead only have to focus on enjoying them!
At Blanchford Landscape Group, our serious horticultural knowledge and experience, as well as our access to unique plant material, has made interior plantscaping a natural fit for us.
Clients appreciate that they can lean on us for our expertise and take all of the guesswork out of houseplants. We’ll even care for them for you—and as we mentioned, we can rotate out underperforming plants when that time comes. Just as we love transforming outdoor living spaces, we’re incredibly passionate about enhancing interior spaces with beautiful plant material.
Are you ready to learn more about our interior plantscaping services at your Bozeman or Big Sky, MT home, or business? Let’s connect and talk about your needs. Then we can meet and review a detailed plan of action. With everything being handled for you, you’ll be able to relax and enjoy your indoor plants to the fullest.
Are you ready to learn more about our interior plantscaping services at your Bozeman or Big Sky, MT home, or business? Let’s connect and talk about your needs. Then we can meet and review a detailed plan of action. With everything being handled for you, you’ll be able to relax and enjoy your indoor plants to the fullest.
Image Source: Dracaena, Pothos, Philodendron, Ficus
