Plants for a bedroom

A bedroom is a cool room, a dim room and a still room. Curtains are closed for a third of the day, the heating is often lower than the rest of the house, and nothing moves the air. That is a narrower set of conditions than a living room offers, and the plants that do well are the ones that tolerate steadiness rather than the ones that want a lot of anything.

It is also the room where a plant is looked at most and attended to least. Something that holds its shape for months without intervention belongs here. Something that needs turning, misting and watching does not.

The oxygen story, and what it is worth

The claim that certain plants make a bedroom healthier comes from two places. One is a NASA study from the late nineteen eighties that put single plants in sealed chambers with specific pollutants and measured what came out. In a sealed chamber the effect was real; in a bedroom with a door and a window, the exchange of air with the rest of the house is hundreds of times larger than anything a plant can do.

The other is that succulents, cacti and snake plants use crassulacean acid metabolism, which means they open their pores at night rather than in the heat of the day, and so release oxygen while you sleep. That much is true. The amount is measured in millilitres, against the many litres a sleeping person breathes. Keep them there because a snake plant in a bedroom looks well, and because it will forgive you the fortnight you forget it.

What actually matters in a bedroom

Light, first. A bedroom with the curtains drawn until nine and closed again at dusk gives a plant a short day, and a plant on a chest of drawers across the room from the window is in low light whatever the window is doing.

Cold, second. Bedrooms are often the coolest room in the house by design. Check the comfortable range on the entry before putting a tropical plant in an unheated room.

Damp soil, third, and this is the one worth acting on. Wet potting compost in a still, cool room grows surface mould, and mould spores are the part of houseplants that genuinely affects a sleeper with allergies or asthma. Let the top of the pot dry between waterings, keep dead leaves off the soil, and use a pot with a drainage hole and a saucer you empty.