Indoor Plants for the Bedroom: 12 Best Picks (and the Sleep Myths Explained)

Bedrooms tend to be the room people plant last, and the room least suited to plants: often north-facing, curtains drawn for a third of the day, heating turned down at night, and no reason to be in there during daylight hours anyway. The good news is that the plants which tolerate all of that happen to be the same ones that need the least attention from you — so a bedroom is a genuinely easy room to plant, once you stop trying to put a calathea in it.

#12 plants that suit bedroom conditions

#Is it safe to sleep with plants in the room?

Yes. The concern comes from the fact that plants respire at night, taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. The quantities involved are negligible: a room full of houseplants produces a small fraction of the CO₂ that the sleeping person does. If plants in a bedroom were a problem, sharing a bed with someone would be a far bigger one.

#What actually helps sleep

There is reasonable evidence that visible greenery lowers self-reported stress and improves perceived comfort in a room, and lower bedtime stress does help sleep. There is no good evidence that any houseplant changes oxygen levels, humidity or air quality enough to affect sleep physiologically. Lavender is the one plant with some published support for its scent and relaxation — though the effect in studies comes from concentrated essential oil, not from a living plant on a windowsill.

#Plants to avoid in a bedroom

• Strongly scented flowering plants — jasmine, gardenia, hyacinth. Pleasant across a room, overwhelming beside a pillow, and a headache trigger for some people.
• Anything needing bright light — fiddle leaf figs, crotons and succulents will slowly decline behind bedroom curtains.
• Large plants beside the bed if you have dust sensitivity — soil surfaces and dusty leaves both add to the load in a room where you spend eight hours.
• Cacti at reaching distance from a bed, for obvious reasons.
• Toxic species at floor level in a bedroom shared with pets that sleep there — dieffenbachia and philodendron especially.

#Bedroom plants and vastu

Vastu shastra generally recommends keeping heavy plant presence out of the bedroom, allowing small plants in the south-west or west corner, and specifically discourages cacti and thorny plants in a sleeping space. The money plant is usually considered acceptable and auspicious; the tulsi plant is traditionally kept in a more public, north-east position rather than a bedroom.

From a horticultural point of view those placements are workable: a south-west corner in the northern hemisphere gets warm afternoon light, which suits most of the plants on this page. Where the tradition and the plant disagree — a species that needs light placed in a dark corner for auspicious reasons — the plant will lose. Choose a species that fits the direction rather than forcing a plant into a spot it cannot photosynthesise in. Our vastu plant guide works through each direction in detail.

#Practical bedroom setup

1. Put the plant where the curtain is not

   If curtains stay drawn until late morning, the plant loses the best light of the day. Position it beside the window rather than behind the curtain line.

2. Keep pots off the floor near a radiator

   Bedroom radiators usually sit under the window — exactly where you want the plant. Raise it on a stand or move it a metre to the side.

3. Water in the morning

   Watering at night in a cool bedroom leaves the soil wet and cold for hours, which is precisely the condition root rot wants. Water in the morning and it is used through the day instead.

4. Use a cover pot with a saucer you can see

   Bedrooms are where forgotten cachepot reservoirs kill plants, because nobody is checking them during the day.

5. Wipe leaves monthly

   Bedrooms are dusty — fabric, bedding, low airflow. Dust cuts the light a leaf receives, which matters most in the room that has least.