Styling Plants in Your Home

Styling Plants in Your Home

I used to think plant styling was this mysterious skill that only interior designers had figured out. You know, the kind of people who somehow make a fiddle leaf fig look like it belongs in a room instead of awkwardly taking up space in the corner. But after years of moving plants around my apartment (sometimes multiple times a day when I’m procrastinating on actual work), I’ve realized it’s less about having a good eye and more about understanding a few basic principles. And also being okay with the fact that your cat will probably knock over whatever you set up.

The thing about styling plants is that it’s not just about making your space look good on Instagram. I mean, that’s a nice bonus, but really, it’s about creating little pockets of life in your home that make you happy when you walk past them. It’s about working with the light you have (not the light you wish you had) and choosing spots where you’ll actually remember to water them.

I’m going to walk you through how I’ve styled different areas of my apartment. Some of these setups have worked beautifully. Others lasted about a week before I had to rethink everything because the plant started looking sad or my boyfriend complained he couldn’t reach his coffee mugs anymore.

Styling shelves with trails

Trailing plants on shelves were my gateway drug into this whole plant obsession. There’s something so satisfying about watching vines cascade down from a bookshelf. It softens all those hard edges and makes your collection of design books look less “I’m trying too hard” and more “casual creative person lives here.”

My best shelf plant is a pothos I’ve had for three years now. It sits on top of my tallest bookshelf in the living room, and its vines hang down about four feet. I didn’t do anything special to make it trail like that. I just put it up there because I ran out of windowsill space, and it turned out the indirect light from the window across the room was perfect for it.

Here’s what I’ve learned about shelf styling with trailing plants. First, you need to think about weight. I made the mistake early on of putting a large terracotta pot on a floating shelf that was really meant for picture frames. The shelf held, but it sagged noticeably, and I spent three weeks convinced it was going to crash down in the middle of the night. Now I use lighter pots for high shelves (plastic nursery pots inside decorative cache pots work great), and I save the heavy ceramic ones for sturdy furniture.

String of pearls is another plant people love for shelves, but I killed two of them before I accepted that my apartment is too humid for them. They like to dry out completely between waterings, and I’m apparently incapable of not watering things. According to the University of Maryland Extension, succulents like string of pearls need very well-draining soil and infrequent watering, which is just not my natural plant parenting style.

The placement on the shelf matters more than I initially thought. I used to center everything because symmetry feels safe, but trailing plants actually look better when they’re offset to one side. It creates this casual, organic feel instead of looking like you arranged everything with a ruler. I keep my pothos pushed to the left side of the shelf, and the vines trail down over my stack of vintage National Geographic magazines (which I keep meaning to actually read).

One practical thing: you’ll need to trim trailing plants occasionally, or they’ll take over your entire wall. I propagate the cuttings in water and give them to friends, which makes me feel like a generous plant person instead of someone who just has too many plants and needs to offload the babies.

Hanging plants securely

I avoided hanging plants for years because I was terrified of putting holes in my ceiling. I rent, and while my landlord is pretty relaxed, I didn’t want to deal with the whole “repairing ceiling damage” conversation when I eventually move out. But last year I finally caved and hung a spider plant in my bedroom, and now I have four hanging plants and zero regrets.

The key is using the right hardware. I bought a pack of ceiling hooks rated for 20 pounds from the hardware store, and I actually tested them before hanging any plants. I hung my heaviest tote bag filled with books from one hook and left it there for a week. Overkill? Maybe. But I sleep directly under that spider plant, and I didn’t want to wake up with dirt in my face.

For the actual hanging, I drilled into a ceiling joist when possible. I used a stud finder (borrowed from my neighbor because buying one felt excessive for four plants), and I marked the joists with a pencil before doing anything permanent. The joists in my building run perpendicular to the windows, which limited where I could hang things, but that’s just how it is. Not every corner is a plant corner.

When I couldn’t hit a joist, I used toggle bolts. These are the kind that open up behind the drywall and distribute the weight. They’re more secure than those plastic anchor things that come with picture frames. The North Carolina State Extension has a whole guide on hanging heavy objects from ceilings, and while it’s not specifically about plants, the physics are the same.

I hang plants in corners mostly because they look good there and because it keeps them away from the center of the room where my boyfriend (who is tall) would definitely walk into them. Corner placement also works well for light distribution. In my bedroom, I have a hanging pothos in the corner near the window, and it gets just enough morning light without blocking the view.

Watering hanging plants is genuinely annoying. I won’t pretend otherwise. I use a stepladder and either water them in place with a watering can (which inevitably drips on me) or take them down to water them in the bathtub. The bathtub method is better because I can let them drain properly, but it’s also more effort, so I only do it every other week. The alternate weeks I just water them carefully in place and accept that my hair might get wet.

Above: A close up look at the symptoms.

Brightening dark corners

Every apartment has that one corner that gets zero direct light. Mine is the corner near the bathroom, where the hallway turns. I spent six months ignoring it, and then I decided it was dumb to have a completely dead space in a small apartment, so I figured out how to make it work.

The trick with dark corners is accepting that you’re not going to put a sun-loving plant there. I know this sounds obvious, but I’ve watched so many people (including past me) try to make a succulent work in a dark corner and then wonder why it’s stretching toward the ceiling and losing all its color. According to research from the University of Georgia, low-light tolerant plants can survive in areas that receive as little as 25 to 75 foot-candles of light, which is roughly what you get in a corner several feet from a window.

I put a snake plant in my dark corner, and it’s been perfectly happy there for over a year. Snake plants are the most forgiving plants I own. I forget to water mine for weeks at a time (once it was definitely a month), and it just sits there looking exactly the same. It doesn’t grow quickly in that corner, but it doesn’t die either, which I count as a win.

To make the corner feel intentional instead of like “I stuck a plant somewhere,” I added a small side table underneath the snake plant. The table is from a thrift store and it’s kind of beaten up, which I like because it doesn’t feel too precious. I put a small lamp on the table (one of those cheap IKEA ones), and now the corner is actually a spot I use. I charge my phone there overnight and I’ve started keeping my current stack of library books on the lower shelf.

The lamp helps, both aesthetically and practically. Even though snake plants don’t need much light to survive, they do a bit better with some supplemental light. I keep the lamp on for a few hours in the evening, and I think it helps. Or maybe it doesn’t and I’m just making myself feel better. Either way, the corner looks less sad now.

I haven’t tried a grow light because the ones that actually work seem expensive, and the cheap ones look aggressively purple and weird. If I had a darker apartment overall, I’d probably invest in one, but for now, regular lamps and low-light plants are doing the job.

Grouping for aesthetics

I group my plants in clusters, and I didn’t realize this was “a thing” until I saw it described in a design blog as “creating vignettes.” I just thought of it as “putting all my plants in one spot so I don’t forget to water the ones in random corners.”

My main plant cluster is on my dining table. I don’t eat at the dining table (I eat on the couch like a normal person), so it’s basically a plant table now. I have seven plants grouped there, all different heights and textures. There’s a tall dracaena in the back, a couple of pothos in the middle, and smaller plants like a peperomia and a pilea in front. The different heights make it more interesting to look at than if everything was the same size.

What makes a grouping look good instead of messy is using odd numbers. Three plants look better than two. Five looks better than four. I don’t know why this works (something about visual balance that I didn’t pay enough attention to in my design theory classes), but it consistently does. When I had an even number of plants on the table, it always looked slightly off, like something was missing.

I also try to vary the textures. Mixing a broad-leafed plant like a pothos with something spiky like a snake plant or something delicate like a fern makes the group more visually interesting. It’s the same principle as mixing textures in a room (smooth leather with nubby wool, etc.), just with plants.

The grouping serves a practical purpose too. All those plants in one spot create a humid microclimate, which is good for tropical plants. I learned this from a horticulture article from Iowa State University. The plants release moisture through their leaves, and when they’re grouped together, they all benefit from that extra humidity. My ferns especially seem happier since I started clustering plants instead of spreading them around the apartment.

I water the whole group at once, which makes it harder to forget anyone. When I had plants scattered everywhere, I’d inevitably miss one and find it three weeks later looking crispy and sad. Now I just work through the cluster, checking each plant’s soil, and I’m done.

Above: The tools you need to fix this.

Pot styling tips

I have opinions about pots, which is something I never thought I’d say. But after years of buying plants and figuring out what to put them in, I’ve developed some strong preferences.

First, drainage holes are non-negotiable for me. I know some people can water carefully enough to keep plants alive in pots without drainage, but I’m not one of them. I’ve killed too many plants by overwatering in decorative pots with no holes. Now I keep plants in their plastic nursery pots and put those inside prettier cache pots. This setup also makes repotting easier because I can just pull out the nursery pot, replace it with a bigger one, and keep the same decorative pot.

For cache pots, I mix materials and colors, but I try to stick to a general palette so everything doesn’t look chaotic. Most of my pots are terracotta, white ceramic, or natural materials like woven baskets. I have one bright yellow pot that I bought on impulse and immediately regretted, but my boyfriend likes it, so it stays (it holds the pilea, in case you were wondering).

Terracotta is my default choice because it’s cheap, it looks good, and it’s porous, which helps prevent overwatering. The downside is it gets these white calcium deposits on the outside that look crusty. I used to scrub them off obsessively, but I’ve made peace with them now. They’re just part of the terracotta aesthetic. If you really hate them, you can soak the pot in vinegar water to remove them, but they’ll come back eventually.

For plants that need more humidity, like my ferns, I use ceramic pots because they hold moisture better than terracotta. The University of Minnesota Extension notes that pot material affects how quickly soil dries out, which matters more than I realized when I first started collecting plants.

Size matters too. A pot that’s too big for a plant looks weird (like a small child wearing adult shoes), and it also increases the risk of root rot because there’s too much soil holding moisture. I usually go one size up from the nursery pot when I repot. A four-inch plant goes into a six-inch pot, not an eight-inch one.

I’ve started elevating some pots on plant stands, which sounds fancy but really just means I bought some cheap wooden stools and turned them upside down. It adds height variation and makes smaller plants easier to see when they’re grouped with larger ones. Plus, it gets the pots off the floor, which my vacuum cleaner appreciates.

The reality is that pot styling is partly about aesthetics and partly about working with what you can afford. I’d love to have all my plants in expensive handmade ceramic pots, but that’s not happening on a graphic designer’s budget. Thrift stores and discount home stores are your friends. I’ve found some of my favorite pots at Goodwill for three dollars each.

Styling plants in your home is really just about paying attention to what works in your specific space and being willing to move things around when they’re not working. That dark corner plant might need to move closer to a window. That shelf might be better with one trailing plant instead of three. The grouping on your table might need a taller plant in the back.

I move my plants around constantly, which my boyfriend finds baffling, but I think of it as an ongoing design project. The goal is to create little moments of green throughout your home that make you happy when you see them. And if the plant styling also happens to look good in photos, that’s just a bonus.

References

North Carolina State Extension. “Installing Ceiling-Mounted Fixtures.” NC State Extension Publications.

University of Georgia. “Growing Indoor Plants with Success.” UGA Extension Publications.

University of Maryland Extension. “Succulent Plant Care.” University of Maryland Home and Garden Information Center.

University of Minnesota Extension. “Houseplant Care: Containers and Repotting.” University of Minnesota Extension Publications.

Iowa State University Extension. “Creating Favorable Conditions for Houseplants.” ISU Extension and Outreach Horticulture.