Indoor Plants for Wellbeing

Indoor plants for wellbeing aren’t just pretty to look at. Having houseplants in the home can reduce stress and anxiety while improving productivity, air quality, concentration, and so much more. We love that the humble houseplant can contribute to your wellbeing as well as looking pretty on a shelf.  We’re here to help you fill your home with your favourite green beauties and learn more about how they can help boost your mood whenever you need a pick-me-up.

Discover the best indoor house plants to boost your wellbeing and improve your health.

Caring for Plants Produces a Sense of Calm

Indoor plants for wellbeing come with a huge range of benefits. Watering and caring for plants gives you a sense of calm after a busy day. That’s because your mind focuses on something productive, helping to give your brain a break from negative thoughts and the stresses of everyday life.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed or your brain whirrs at a million miles an hour, caring for plants helps focus your mind, having a calming effect on your mood and stress levels.

Which Houseplants Bring Calm to the Home?

Caring for houseplants is the perfect form of natural self-care. We’ve listed the best indoor plants for mental health, perfect for destressing and adding calm into your home, below.

Orchids

Orchids are just so beautiful to look at. They’re packed with stress-busting benefits, encouraging happy, positive thoughts. Orchids also produce beneficial oxygen, which creates a calm and relaxed environment in your home. If you struggle to sleep, place an orchid on your bedside table, as it’ll reduce the risk of anxiety and insomnia.

They come in a range of bright, vibrant colours, from orange and yellow to pink and mauve, meaning there’s bound to be the perfect orchid for your home.

Jade Plant

The cute Jade Plant’s also known by its scientific moniker, the Peperomia Rotundifolia. It doesn’t only look great, but it’s perfect for cleansing the air, helping to prevent the foggy, under-the-weather feeling common chemicals produce.

You’ll get such a sense of satisfaction from watching the leaves trail down from a tall shelf. Place it in your home office for a sense of calm and relaxation when you need a five-minute breather.

Succulents

All succulents are fab mood-boosting, calm-inducing plants. They release oxygen into the atmosphere, improving your quality of sleep, elevating your mood and relieving stress and tension. They’re also super easy to care for, so you don’t even have to worry about giving them too much care.

Peace Lily

With its simple white blooms, the Peace Lily looks great in any space. It’s known as a bringer of peace. The flowers represent the white flag – the universal symbol of truce. Wherever you place your plant, it’ll bring peace and tranquillity to your home.

Existing With Nature Is Good For Your Wellbeing

At The Little Botanical, we’re passionate about plants and believe that existing with them in your interior space is a hugely positive experience. Living with nature in your home is known to lift your mood and make you feel happier, helping you to recharge while helping you focus on something more positive.

Which Houseplants Bring You Closer to Nature?

All of our indoor plants for wellbeing are perfect for boosting your feelings of calm. But bringing the outdoors inside and creating your very own urban jungle is the best way to help you feel closer to nature. 

Living Walls

Living walls are an easy way to introduce biophilic design into your space. Biophilic principles are rooted in the outdoors and are all about bringing the outdoors inside to improve your physical and mental health and wellbeing and recuperate your energy. 

Herbs, including mint, are also great for your health. Our living walls come planted with herbs for outdoors or houseplants for indoors. Both have amazing benefits and will transform the space.

Living Art

Jump on the jungle greenery trend with the fantastic Living Art product. Featuring a mix of our bestselling houseplants, it gives you views of nature inside, which has a soothing effect on the spirit and mind. Indoor houseplants transport us to a place of tranquillity – and our living art does it in style.

Plants Improve Productivity and Concentration

Studies with indoor plants for wellbeing show that indoor plants can improve productivity, concentration and wellbeing by 47%. They also boost memory by 20%. These stats are seriously impressive, and it’s all because plants have energy-boosting colours, aromas and oxygenating abilities that stimulate the thinking process. They also remove carbon dioxide from the air, helping you see things more clearly. Surround yourself with houseplants at your desk and they’ll help give you a much-needed productivity boost. You might be surprised at the results.

Which Houseplants Help With Productivity and Concentration?

Choosing your favourite houseplants is a perfect way to boost your productivity and concentration levels. But these plants are proven to help more than others (and they look great, too!).

Devils ivy

The Devil’s Ivy (aka the Scindapsus Aurea) is a firm favourite here at The Little Botanical. Not only does it increase humidity in the room, but it reduces dust levels, leaving the environment a more productive and pleasant place to work. You can pop this tough guy on a shelf and admire it when you need to dig deep for some inspiration.

Ficus Benjamina

The Ficus Benjamina is a plant of many talents. It’s an air-purifier, whilst reducing stress and encouraging positivity. Don’t be fooled by its other name, the Weeping Fig. This plant will leave you feeding re-energised and reinvigorated (no tears here).

Sansevieria Punk

The Sansevieria Punk is another air-purifier and the perfect desk buddy. It has crazy punk-like leaves (hence the name), bringing smiles to everyone who sees it. Read more to find out about how Sansevierias are fantastic at removing toxins from the air. The benefit of this is that it clears the mind, helping you to focus and see things more clearly.

Plants make Fabulous Air-Purifiers

Several houseplants have amazing air-purifying benefits. They remove harmful toxins from the air, such as:

• Formaldehyde: found in most household cleaning agents, cigarette smoke and cooking fuels
• Benzene: a common solvent that causes several health conditions
• Carbon monoxide: a colourless, tasteless poisonous gas
• Trichloroethylene: a chemical often used in printing and dry-cleaning
• Xylene: often used as a cleaning agent and a standard component of ink
• Toluene: a common solvent used in disinfectants, glue and paint thinner
• Ammonia: a corrosive chemical most commonly used as a fertiliser and for improving crop yields

You may not realise it, but your home likely harbours some of these chemicals. But there’s no need to panic. They’re in such low quantities, you’ll barely even notice them. Having air-purifying houseplants in your home removes them before they build up and become a nuisance, helping to boost your mood and improve your concentration levels.

Which Plants Purify Your Air the Best?

All of the plants below have a unique range of air-purifying benefits. Why not bundle them up into a gang of super houseplants or place them in different areas of your home to help remove toxins from the bedrooms or bathrooms too? Whatever you choose, here’s our pick of the best purifying plants for filtering out unwanted nasties.

Sansevieria Snakey

Also amusingly known as the Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, the Sansevieria Snakey is an excellent plant for absorbing toxins. It’s good for bedrooms because it absorbs CO2 and other toxins at night. Even though the leaves look cool and intricate, it’s super easy to care for. Even with a bit of neglect, the Snake plant will still thrive.

English Ivy

Trailing and air-purifying – we love this little guy. The English Ivy is one of NASA’s highest-scoring houseplants. It ticks all the boxes for removing toxins, except ammonia. It also has beautiful trailing leaves, making it a gorgeous plant to look at. Pop it in a home office and let it get to work while you do.

Ficus Elastica

With its green, shiny leaves, the Ficus Elastica (aka the Rubber Plant) isn’t just great to look at – it’s also good at  removing harmful toxins. It produces lots of oxygen and removes mould spores and bacteria from the air. It’s also particularly effective at removing formaldehyde. The large glossy leaves make this plant a real statement in your home too.

Aloe Vera

The Aloe Vera plant known for its its use in skincare and beauty creams is alsos clever enough to filter out benzene, formaldehyde and carbon dioxide from the air. This do-it-all plant has long, spiky fleshy leaves full of aloe vera gel, making it one of the world’s most beneficial plants.

Plants add Feng Shui to your Home

According to ancient feng shui principles, greenery has a positive effect on the environments we live in, improving energy and promoting good luck. Plants can also revive tired, lifeless spaces, bringing the wood element into a home. The wood element is one of the five main feng shui principles. It represents the spring season and is associated with new growth, new beginnings and new life. It’s symbolised by plants, flowers and trees, as their roots represent vitality.

Which Plants are Best for adding Feng Shui?

There isn’t such a thing as good and bad plants for feng shui. All plants represent the ancient tradition, as long as you feel connected with them. However, some plants are better than others for bringing good energy into your home, including:

Boston Fern

The Boston Fern is perfect for creating an oasis of calm and a spa-like space in your bathroom. It symbolises wisdom and happiness, adding positive vibes to your home. As it’s such a welcoming plant, it’ll also work well in an entrance area or hallway, as long as there’s plenty of indirect sunlight.

Fiddle Leaf Fig

The Insta-famous Fiddle Leaf Fig is guaranteed to brighten up your living space, adding texture and detail to your home while refreshing your indoor space. Because the plant grows upward, it’s a positive chi (energy) enhancer. Caring for it will teach you wisdom, patience, kindness and love. Place it in your home office and feel it lift your mood.

Sansevieria Spiky

The Sansevieria Spiky is a fab feng shui plant, providing helpful energy whenever you need it. It has strong protective powers, shielding you against negative chi. That’s because the plant’s spiky leaves grow upward, signifying growth. It has strong wood energy that cuts through negativity and stagnant forces, making it perfect for a home office. 

Areca Palm

The tropical, Amazonian-looking Areca Palm is considered lucky according to feng shui principles. It attracts positivity and brings wealth, prosperity and peace to any space, pushing out negative energy. To enhance productivity, position it in an east, south, southeast and north direction.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about indoor plants with health benefits. If you’d like to learn more about any of the plants on our list or have any questions about which plants work best in a space in your home, do get in touch with us at [email protected], we love hearing from you.

Lots of love,

Team TLB xx