Bathrooms can be a curious place. Often the dampest, humid-est places in our homes, and yet they’re where we feel the most clean. Warm though they can be, they can be cold and clinical if you’ve opted for a white or blue interior design.
To liven them up, houseplants are a great way to go. Purifying the air a bit while drinking in all that post-shower mist, houseplants are awesome for making a bathroom a bit more homely. But which houseplants like that atmosphere the most?
We’ve pulled together our favourite damp-loving houseplants, a collection of the best exotic greenery for jazzing up a windowsill, elevating a medicine cabinet or, if you’re brave, creating a captivating toilet cistern.
Though that last one may cause a disturbing tickle or two.
The 7-ish Best Bathroom Plants
The Amazing Spider-Plant
Spider plants do really well in bathrooms, best in an elevated spot where their spidery tendrils can hang out in all their glory. Note though that you want a bathroom rather than a separate toilet room, as those generally don’t have the humidity you need for a spider plant to thrive. With diligent watering you’ll get away with it though!
Put your spider-plant in a well-lit spot and use some houseplant fertiliser to get spidery shoots. We think they’re the coolest-looking parts of a spider plant, but when these spider-bits start to wither, pinch them off to save littering your bathroom floor when they fall off. Word on the street is you can plant these to create more spider plants if you’d like to create a spider plant nest.
Superior Succulents
You might think of succulents (cacti in particular) as preferring arid, dry environments. That’s true for the desert ones, but some succulents are found in tropical, humid environments like jungles or hothouses. It’s these ones you’ll want to put in your bathroom, provided it’s one of the warm ones and not a freezing cold room at the end of the house.
As bathrooms often have medicine cabinets, we’ll start with a wonderful succulent considered to have healing properties of its own.
‘Allo Aloe Vera
It seems the jury’s still out on whether aloe vera has any benefits for burns and skin disorders, but it certainly looks like it should with its gel-like consistency and the fact it’s in all sorts of pharmaceutical stuff. But chances are you aren’t going to be harvesting it any time soon, so you can just enjoy the fresh air and deep greens of its thick, slightly-spiky leaves.
Snake plant – (ss)Sansevieria
If you ever forget sansevieria’s common name, just remember the S’s and ‘snake plant’ will jump to the tip of your tongue. These are pretty hardy little plants so they’ll survive a forgetful carer, and they’re well contained so won’t fill a corner/space as completely as a spider plant can.
Peace Lily
Peaceful and serene, the peace lily is ‘the’ houseplant to start with if you don’t know where to begin. Make sure it gets frequent watering and lots of light to see its unique white flowers flourish. Keep it in front of a window rather than a dingy bathroom corner!
Tradescantia Zebrina – the Wanderer
Despite its currently contained appearance, the Tradescantia Zebrina will eventually overflow its pot or basket like only the best hanging bathroom plants do. Those purple-green leaves will droop down more and more the longer you care for it, turning your bathroom into a jungle (without all the creepy crawlies). And it adapts to all sorts of growing conditions, whether your bathroom is damp or well-ventilated.
And no, we’re not going to talk about its common name – its either a zebra plant or a wanderer to us.
Orchids
Beautiful flowers, thick green leaves and – most importantly – lovers of moisture. Most orchids don’t sit in soil but have their roots flying free, where they suck in water from the air, so bathrooms are the perfect spot for them with all that great condensation floating about. They don’t flower all year round, but the roots and leaves still provide year-long interest while you’re waiting for the intricate flowers to appear.
Interested in more Bathroom Plants? Check out the whole lot here!
Header Photo by Chris Abney on Unsplash