Indoor plants are a vital feature of the well-furnished hall. It is here that guests gain their first impression of the inside of your home. Beautiful foliage and flowers are an immediate indication of a well-tended house. The best indoor plants for hallway spaces are large, architectural specimens. If your entryway is large, well-lit, and heated in winter, placing plants on stair landing areas extends that welcome even further into your home.
Enhance Your Home’s Decor with Plants on Staircase Landing and Hallway
Don’t just scatter a few pots about – go for the bold and the unusual. Even if you don’t have a lot of room to work with, a unique plant makes a big impact. For example, a Moth Orchid in flower may not attract much attention in a large living room where it is surrounded by ornaments, pictures, and books. However, it certainly stands out in solitary splendor on a hall table. Here is the place for the large and illuminated indoor garden, the stately Ficus tree, or a group of Azaleas in full flower.
Unfortunately, most halls present a very different scene. They are poorly lit, subject to drafts, and often cold at night. They tend to be narrow passageways rather than square or rectangular rooms. Flourishing but unexciting plants look better than struggling exotics. Make sure you choose the right plants for the light levels and temperatures you have.
The Benefits of Adding Indoor Plants
When shopping for the best indoor plants for hallways or landing areas, consider the many benefits they provide.
Health Benefits
Indoor plants offer a host of health benefits, from keeping your indoor air clean to reducing stress.
Boosting Mood and Reducing Stress
Scientists have found that tending plants reduces both physical and psychological stress. When you consider how much time we spend indoors every day, the need to connect to nature has become more important to mental health. Tending houseplants gives us a chance to relax and reflect, while reducing blood pressure and soothing the nerves.
Improving Indoor Air Quality
Many of us have read about the air-cleaning quality of houseplants. Even NASA has documented a number of plants that remove toxins from the air while producing all-important oxygen. But that’s not all they do.
Some of the less obvious fern plant benefits include traditional medicinal use as well as adding humidity to the air. Increased indoor humidity soothes irritated sinuses and reduces itchy skin, especially in homes with central heat and air.
Enhancing the Aesthetic Appeal of Your Home
Home décor isn’t always about decoration. It’s proven that a serene, attractive home is a healthy home. Hallway plants bring beauty as well as a feeling of calm to everyone who enters. This sets the tone for every interaction under your roof.
Increasing Productivity with Plants
Adding houseplants for hallway or entry spaces also energizes you at the end of a long day. Ornamental plants, whether flowers or foliage, creates a more productive atmosphere. They’ve been shown to improve memory and concentration in the workplace.
Cost-Effective and Low-Maintenance
The best hallway plants are often easy to care for and thrive under neglectful conditions. While a large architectural plant may come with a high price tag, these plants usually live for years, even decades, with low light and infrequent watering.
Top House Plants to Thrive in Your High-Traffic Areas
When choosing house plants for your hallway or stair landing, look for species known for indoor use. Most modern-day houseplants were discovered 100-200 years ago during the age of exploration. Many were initially gathered and collected from their habitats by British naturalists. Houseplants and exotic species were all the rage during the Victorian age, when British exploration hit its peak.
Since this era, these plants have been hybridized to thrive in a wide range of temperatures and light levels. If there is one characteristic that nearly all houseplants share, it’s the ability to thrive in low light condition. Their native habitats are often forest floors and under the canopies of jungles where they received only dappled sunlight.
Snake Plant
Snake plant, also known as Sansevieria or Dracaena trifasciata, enjoys NASA’s award of the best air-cleaning houseplant. They’re native to tropical Africa and are incredibly easy to care for. While its native habitat is hot and sunny, it’s also a succulent that prefers dry soil. You may only have to water your snake plant once or twice a month. They also survive both low and bright indoor light conditions, making them very flexible.
Moth Orchid
Moth Orchids, or Phalaenopsis spp, are incredibly easy to care for and make excellent indoor plants for beginners. They make a stunning focal point for a small doorway table, offering an exotic bloom that elevates any entryway. If you have bright, indirect light, consider a moth orchid in your hallway or on the landing.
Azaleas
Azaleas make excellent indoor plants because they prefer a cooler temperature. However, they need some bright, indirect light. They are not the easiest of plants to grow indoors, but their showy blooms make them worth a little extra effort. They elevate the look of any room.
ZZ Plant
ZZ plants are popular for a reason. They’re very easy to care for and make a good houseplant for busy people and beginning indoor gardeners. They’re also excellent for cleaning the air, and ZZ plant benefits include the removal of benzene, toluene, and xylene toxins from indoor air.
Chinese Evergreen
If you’re looking for height in your hallway garden, consider Chinese Evergreen. Aglaonema commutatum doesn’t grow quickly. If you choose a large specimen for a hall, entry foyer, or stair landing, you can be confident it won’t need repotting or pruning soon.
Spider Plant
Spider plants have an easy-going nature. Chlorophytum comosum<span style=”font-weight: 400;”> does well in low light but can also handle more sunlight than many other houseplants. You’ll also find several variations, such as reverse striping or curly leaves.
The most enchanting aspect of spider plants is the way they reproduce. Rather than flowering and producing seed, their flowering stems become mini “baby” spider plants that then root into the nearest soil.
Bird’s Nest Fern
Bird’s Nest ferns, Asplenium nidus, are rainforest plants that normally grow in the crooks of tall trees. They make excellent hallway plants because of their dramatic 2-foot tall fronds.
Bird’s Nest Ferns require warmth, humidity, and regular watering. You can place their pots on humidity trays or spritz them with distilled water regularly to keep them happy.
Peace Lily
This tropical plant offers a rare opportunity for those who desire long-lived flowering houseplants. Spathiphyllum absorb formaldehyde and carbon monoxide while providing elegant white flowers every year. While they do require watering and fertilizing, they don’t demand a lot of either. They’re also comfortable between 65 to 80°F, which makes them suitable for every home.
Primula
Primula, more often called primrose, is a popular flowering plant that makes a colorful addition to your foyer. Pots of primroses bring the first flowers of spring indoors, where they’ll bloom in shades of yellow, orange, blue, pink, red, and more.
However, primula won’t live indefinitely indoors. You’ll need to return them to the outdoors after flowering.
Garden bulbs
Your favorite garden bulbs also make a colorful addition to any entryway. If you’re looking for bright hues and delicious fragrance to make your home more welcoming, consider hyacinths, daffodils, or crocuses. Growing bulbs out of season is known as “forcing,” and you’ll find plenty of varieties to choose from at your local garden center.
You can plant the bulbs outdoors after the foliage has died off. Allow the plant to dry out completely, then add to your outdoor flower beds.
Cyclamen
Cyclamen are another charming, but temporary addition to the indoor garden. These cool-weather flowers prefer shady conditions and you’ll find them during the winter for indoor display. Once they have finished decorating your doorway, find them some dry shade outdoors for planting.
Erica
The name Erica covers a range of plants native to South Africa. They’re related to the family of blooming heath and heathers. Erica requires regular water and humid conditions, so you’ll need to mist it regularly. It also likes cooler temperatures and moist soil.
Choose the Right Plants
Before choosing plants for your hallway, entry, or stair landings, be absolutely honest with yourself about two things: the existing conditions and your commitment to plant care.
If you have a realistic picture of the light levels in these areas, you can choose the right plants for them. You may be tempted to purchase small plants to “grow into” the space. However, you want an impact. Invest in a large plant if that’s what you want. The low light levels in most hallways result in slow-growing plants.
Don’t over-commit yourself to lifelong plant care routines. If you don’t have time for misting or regular watering, don’t place thirsty plants in high-traffic spaces. High maintenance plants are best suited for areas you spend a lot of time in. Hallways are transitional spaces, and you’ll soon find yourself neglecting or forgetting about them.
Creating a Relaxing Atmosphere with Plants
Create a relaxing entryway to your home by staging it with large tropical plants. If you’re worried they won’t get enough light, try warm, colored grow lights, which further creates a relaxing feeling.
You can recreate the feel of a forest by arranging a number of plants of varying sizes. Tall indoor plants for hallway spaces mimic a forest tree canopy. Waist-high potted plants serve as a “bush layer.”
Continue the feeling of a forest pathway by adding plants on stair landing platforms leading up from the entry. Place plant stands at different heights outside bannisters and on the landing to surround the senses with a jungle of peaceful green.
Ways to Incorporate Plants into Your Staircase Landing and Hallway Design
You can keep your display interesting in several ways. Many flowering indoor plants may only serve as a temporary display. Primroses, flowering bulbs, and cyclamen, for example, add cheer and short-term color to tabletops and stands. Brightly-flowered but inexpensive plants here and there work as disposable displays in the same way as cut flowers. Although you may want to plant them out into the garden if possible.
Alternatively, you can practice rotation with foliage plants. This calls for removing the pots when the plants start to look sickly and placing them in your well-lit ‘hospital’ room or sunroom until they recover. A regular rotation of varying leaf colors and shapes keeps your indoor garden fresh, healthy, and interesting.
The Best Placement for Plants on Your Staircase Landing and Hallway
Placement of your hallway plants really depends on the space available. Make room for architectural size specimens, such as container grown trees or potted ferns.
One favorite site is a table near the front door, particularly if you have large sidelights. Make sure the plants are kept out of the line of traffic at this congested spot. Never obstruct the staircase. Do not choose spiky or thorny types such as Cacti. Ferns are usually an excellent choice.
A well-lit spot near the hall window or at the top of the stairs is often the best hallway environment. Garden bulbs, Azalea, Cyclamen, Erica, Cineraria, and Primula usually last longer on a hallway or landing windowsill than in a centrally-heated living room. Keep the size of the plant in keeping with the space available. A large plant in a small hallway makes the area look even smaller. Consider using the same varieties in both hallway and landing to link the two areas together
Maintenance Tips for Indoor Plants in Your Hallway and Landing
Choosing the right plants for staircase landing placement is half the maintenance battle. While you may promise yourself to tend them lovingly every weekend, it’s best to choose low-maintenance plants to start. House plants for hallway spaces should be tolerant of low light, without excess requirements for moisture or fertilizers.
You may want to invest in a few easy-care large palms or small trees to serve as a backdrop to smaller specimens. That way, you can choose one or two high-maintenance or rare plants to rotate on table tops or stands. They’ll be easy to remove for a good soak or regular misting without adding more humidity to these areas of your home.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2020 and has been completely updated.
