5 Mood-Boosting Plants to Grow in Your Bathroom

Houseplants are an easy way to instantly transform your bathroom into an at-home spa. By placing a humidity-loving plant near your shower, you’ll add a touch of luxury that can promote relaxation and evoke the feeling of an exotic getaway. But beyond helping you transform your bathroom into an aesthetically-pleasing space, research has found that indoor plants can provide a major mood boost and help relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Here are some of the best houseplants to grow in your bathroom that can raise your spirits, as well as brighten your space.

Aloe Vera

A beautiful succulent plant with fleshy, wide leaves, aloe vera can add a fun pop of green to a drab bathroom. They need ample moisture and require a minimal amount of watering — typically once a week during the warmer months, and less often during the colder seasons.

Not only will this moisture-loving plant thrive in your bathroom, it’s also a major beauty booster! The gooey gel naturally produced by the plant can be used for everything from soothing sunburns to clearing up acne. You can even use aloe vera gel as a natural toothpaste.

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Snake Plant

Perfect for novice at-home gardeners, the snake plant is pretty much indestructible. It can go for long periods of time without being watered, and survives in either bright or low light. However, this slow-growing plant does best if placed in indirect sunlight, so position this plant near a window for best results.

But this plant is much more than a pretty piece of green for your home. The snake plant is a remarkably effective air purifier. In a joint study carried out by the University of Georgia and Yonsei University, the plant removed both benzene and formaldehyde from the air.

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Calathea Rattlesnake

From its distinctively patterned leaves with dark burgundy undersides to its dramatic shape, the calathea rattlesnake plant is definitely a conversation piece. As part of their circadian rhythm, these plants raise and lower their leaves from day to night in a unique movement that’s earned them the nickname “the prayer plant.”

According to gardening site Bloomscape, your bathroom is the perfect spot for the calathea rattlesnake, which loves moist environments and temperatures up to 85 degrees. They only need to be watered once a week or so, when their soil is completely dry.

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Chinese Evergreen

As you likely guessed from its name, this plant is native to the tropics of Asia. Its large, glossy leaves range in color from dark red to green to silver, depending on the species. It thrives in humid, warm environments, making it the perfect choice for your bathroom.

This unfussy plant can do well in low levels of light, so if your bathroom doesn’t have a large window — don’t worry! Just water once every seven to ten days. The only thing that can really hurt the Chinese evergreen is cold, so make sure that it’s always kept in an environment above 65 degrees.

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Air Plant

In the wild, the air plant grows in a highly unusual manner. It clings onto other plants or other elements;  think the trunk of a tree — instead of plunging its roots into the ground. Also very atypically for a plant, it does not feed via its roots. It absorbs nutrients via scales on its leaves.

An air plant is great for the bathroom, as there’s no need to deal with soil, which can get messy. Because this plant can grow in a wide variety of unique spaces, it gives you free reign to get as creative as you want in terms of how to hang it. Many people choose to place their air plants in glass containers which are hung from the ceiling, for an ethereal, optical illusion-like effect.

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