Interior Decor Tutorial: How to Arrange and Care For Indoor Plants

Discover ideas to decorate your house with indoor plants, adding color and texture to your interior design, and learn how to create a space in which they can flourish

The trend for using plants to brighten up our homes is booming. Indoor plants not only breathe life into a space, but they also act as the perfect interior accessories—they allow us to play with color, shapes, and texture against the backdrop of our houses.

But what are some top tips for arranging plants in your home with both style and care in mind? That’s where stylists Igor and Judith come in. As the founders of nature-inspired interior design blog Urban Jungle (@urbanjungleblog), they share knowledge and experience with their online community. In this tutorial, they list their ideas for decorating with house plants to help them thrive.

1. Positioning: all plants need light!

The positioning of plants in your home is key to making sure they thrive. All plants need light, but depending on the type of plant it is, it will need varying levels of light. For example, snake plants are well adjusted to low-lit spaces so they could be the perfect plant for a room in your home which is a bit darker.

Likewise, if you have a plant that needs lots of light, then a spot next to the window in your brightest room could be perfect for it. A word of caution from Igor and Judith though: be careful not to over-expose your plants to too much light so that they don’t get sunburnt.

Where possible, make sure your plants can see the sky, so that they’re living in a place that mimics their natural environment.

2. Create a care plan

When you buy a plant, they come with a tag outlining the care plan for their specific needs—for example, the label will specify whether it likes indirect light or sun exposure all day long, and how often you should water it.

These care plan tags are really helpful to understand the basic needs of your plant, but Igor and Judith suggest adapting the routine depending on where you want to put the plant in your home. For example, bathrooms are more humid, so think about whether the plants you put in the bathroom will like this level of humidity, and how this might impact the amount of watering needed.

Igor and Judith also recommend regularly cleaning your plants with water, and checking the underside of your plants for pests.

3. Integrate plants into your interior decor

Here’s the fun part: decoration. This is something you can play around with, experimenting with different heights, textures, and varieties of plants for a more interesting aesthetic.

One tip from Igor and Judith is to recreate natural scenes. For example, in nature, plants of all different shapes and sizes grow next to each other; try mirroring this indoors by placing small plants with large plants for an organic look. To optimize your use of space, add trailing plants and hanging plants.

4. Experiment with color and texture

When you’re styling home interiors, a top tip to make it stand out is to vary the colors and textures you use, and the same rule should be applied when decorating with plants. There are so many different colors and textures of indoor plants, so explore them.

Plants don't have to be green. If you want to create contrast in your decor, add some burgundy-colored plants to your collection, and pair these with terracotta pots for added depth in your color scheme. When it comes to texture, matte leaves can create the perfect backdrop for glossy leaves, so look great together.

As well as experimenting with the plants themselves, interesting planters can add quirky details throughout your space, breaking up the harmony of visual appeal and adding that wow factor to your home.

Want to learn more techniques for decorating your home or office with plants, and learn professional styling techniques to transform your interior spaces into your own indoor oasis? Check out Urban Jungle’s online course Home Styling and Decoration with Plants.

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