Indoor Plants For Your Mental Wellbeing

Have you been feeling lots of stress lately? If you are, you’re not alone. In today’s world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by many things, work, your family, money, but the answer to these feelings of stress and anxiety may be a lot more simple than you’d think. As it turns out, your beloved pothos, snake plant, or succulent can actually help reduce levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Step up your interior decoration game and also improve your mental wellbeing just by adding some natural greenery to your living space.

Benefits of houseplants

Studies show that houseplants are highly beneficial to relieving stress and anxiety in many ways. Let’s take a look at a couple of the bonuses you can get from adding some plants around your house.

Relieve anxiety and depression

There are a couple of different ways that plants can help relieve feelings of depression and anxiety. Some studies suggest that being among nature and natural objects help to reduce cortisol levels, the chemical released by our bodies when we experience a stressor. Others claim that there’s a specific bacteria in plant soil that causes your brain to release serotonin, which triggers feelings of happiness. And to go even further, others say that by simply nurturing your plants and being surrounded by them immediately lifts your mood. Whatever the true reason or reasons may be, it’s undisputed that you can improve your mental health with houseplants.

Improve air quality

Through the process of photosynthesis, plants are natural air purifiers. They work to suck toxins and carbon dioxide out of the air and produce pure oxygen in return. Breathing in toxins, dust, and other pollutants can cause coughing, fatigue, itchy eyes, and other negative health effects. Improving the air quality of your home can lead to a healthier life and higher sustainability.

Reduce background noise

One of the lesser known benefits of plants is that they help reduce noise by absorbing sound into their leaves. If you live in an area with street traffic, passersby, or even just noisy neighbors, plants can help soak up some of that constant buzz and create a state of serenity and tranquility within your space. Just be sure to place larger plants around the perimeter of the room or space you are trying to sound proof, and the noise will bounce from the wall into the surface of the leaves.

Increase productivity

If you’ve ever had those days of working from home where you just can’t seem to concentrate, the solution to your problem could be indoor plants. Research shows that people can retain attention better when doing tasks if they are surrounded by plants. This is due to the calming aromas, stimulating colors, and air-cleaning abilities that plants provide, which all, in turn, influence people to be more attentive.

8 beneficial houseplants that are easy to take care of

Now that we know some of the various benefits of common houseplants, you may be wondering which plants are the best for you. We’ve selected some beautiful indoor plants that we think can fit any interior decoration style while simultaneously providing you with beneficial properties.

1. Snake plant

Snake plants are the perfect house plant. They have tall, pointed, almost sword-like, leaves, and also don’t need too much attention or water to thrive. Snake plants are famed for their air-purifying abilities, so much so that even NASA uses them. They can scrub the air of pollutants and toxins, leaving you with fresh oxygen, which reduces anxiety, respiratory problems, and headaches and promotes overall health.

2. Lavender

Lavender is known for its calming scent that gets released from its bright purple flowers. Along with being a beautiful plant, It’s pretty easy to grow as well, just give your lavender lots of sunlight, and it should sprout in no time. Many calming bath and sleep products have a lavender scent added to them because of its stress relief, relaxation, and memory improvement characteristics. Instead of buying these expensive products, why not just grow your own lavender at home?

3. Philodendron

Philodendron is a genus of plants that make extremely good houseplants, as their wide green leaves make them highly adaptable to any amount of sunlight and water conditions inside. These same large leaves make them outstanding air purifiers as well.

4. Rosemary

Rosemary is probably best known for being a flavorful cooking herb, but it has health benefits both when consumed and when grown. Rosemary has needle-like leaves that love sun and can be picked year-round. Inhaling its smell is known to reduce cortisol levels in your bloodstream, lowering stress, and improve cognitive function, which can help reduce anxiety.

5. Aloe vera

With its anti-inflammatory and air-purifying abilities, Aloe vera is a great plant to have around the house. It is a cactus-like plant that loves hot and dry climates, so be sure to give it lots of sunshine. Its leaves are filled with a sticky substance that helps to cure skin wounds and ailments when coated.

6. Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum is a bright flowering plant that comes in many different colors. It’s a very sturdy flower that can be grown in any type of container and brighten up any room. Chrysanthemum is known to improve air quality and bring a sense of joy to the space around them. If dried out and made into a tea, Chrysanthemum helps calm people down by lowering blood pressure and cooling the body.

7. English Ivy

English ivy is a climbing vine that has three-pointed leaves on its vine. It prefers to be in cooler climates with a good air flow. English ivy is famed for its air-purifying properties and is often recommended for people with respiratory problems, such as asthma, allergies, or a cough from the common cold. In fact, this plant can also assist in getting rid of household molds in as little as 12 hours, which is highly beneficial to the air quality of any space.

8. Jasmine

Jasmine is a strong smelling flower that can be white, pink, or yellow in color and can flower in either summer or winter. It enjoys being planted somewhere sunny, warm, and sheltered from any wind or aggressive environments. Smelling the scent of jasmine reduces anxiety levels and can even be used as a medical alternative to depression, anxiety, and insomnia. When made into a tea, it provides a strong antioxidant, along with its stress-reducing properties.

Find your home in plants

Houseplants aren’t just good for decoration, in truth, many indoor plants have numerous health benefits when planted around you or ingested as a tea. At Ukio, we always incorporate plants into our state of the art designs to bring both life to the living space and also to help our guests with any anxiety feelings that may come with moving abroad.