Styling with Low-Light Houseplants: Real-Life Spaces!

[Music] welcome back everybody this is Amanda from plant arena and today we're going to talk about decorating with low light plants and we're gonna focus on four different spaces the first space we're going to focus on is behind me the dining room which looks more like a plant room now sorry everybody I mean my family they're not standing right there the second thing we're going to focus on is my office which has changed a little bit and then the third thing we're going to focus on is an area in the living room that I'm starting to kind of redesign and the fourth area we're going to look at is a section a couple of sections upstairs on the second floor because you know I've moved a lot of plants in from the porch and a lot of them are hanging out in the garage like basically watching me watch them trying to figure out what to do with them so I'm taking all the low light plants that I know that worked well in this house and starting to decorate with them and it takes me a long time sometimes it takes me a few days just to figure out what to do so the I let's just go and look at some of the things that I've done so far and talk about why these plants work well in these phases so we're in the dining room in the dining room I promise you with the dining room and I just want to talk about what I'm trying to accomplish in this space I have this wall here as you can see right and it is this window is an east-facing window I'm sorry it's West it's a west-facing window that's East and so this gets afternoon light but throughout the day it's generally a really dark I have lights on me to be honest with you I have lights on right now so the video looks okay and not grainy but in general it's pretty dark and there's only one light over the top of the dining table that supplies light in here so it's a bit of a challenge so what I've done is you know it's like this burn here this macho fern that I on the porch in the front I didn't know if I was going to bring it in I'm crouching because I'm trying to give you guys a perspective I didn't know if I was going to bring it in or not because it's so big but I like a lush wall right I like a wall that gives you a lot of texture and a lot of volume and I thought this might actually work here because I can cut it back to keep it from taking over the space pretty large right now but and actually I have put it back a bit so you know this firm to me fills in this space and I actually have an on a pedestal I have it sitting on top a pedestal and it's in a box as well so what's great about that is it elevates it off of the floor and it kind of creates to help it helps to create kind of a texture and a volume in this empty space over here and the other thing that I've done I'm gonna pull the camera back so you can see another thing I did which is a trick I've been doing all over the place is I took those wall rings those wall mount plant wall mount things and I put them on the either side of that painting and why I did that was because I really don't have the time or the energy to install light because I really want to do that but I figured this would give me the same effect to have a balance a little symmetry which symmetry is good I think if you're going to use a lot of house plants in one space if you have some kind of symmetrical element or something to anchor it it looks a little less crazy it looks a little less wild there's nothing wrong with looking wild but for me the dining room should have some kind of senseof no no balance maybe so that was my goal over here to do that that's what I did with these ferns and they are the kangaroo paw ferns that I had on the back porch so I'm praying they do well they were getting very low light on that you know actually it's much more light outside than it is inside but it's still a considerably lower light inside here so we'll see how it goes I don't know so on my left side there's a lot of echo in here I'm sorry that's why I'm that's one being really close to the camera because it's super echoey on the left side I have a ficus benjamina that was getting a lot of light and I'm very concerned that it's going to quickly decline and it probably will I don't have a space for it possibly I can bring it upstairs but we'll see for now it's there I like the look I'm just looking for some sort of low light tree that will do well here and I still haven't found one yet so that anybody knows please let me know but I mean I just I have other solutions for that anyway that is that tree is also on a pedestal because I like the height you see it's just really nice to kind of fill that volume in space with vegetation at least that's what I think kind of back where we started but that's okay on the table I have a center piece and sometimes this table gets really crowded with plants and sometimes there's just like one plant on it so for now I put this monstera cutting that I took a while ago and I have a couple other planets on it I really haven't styled it yet it's just kind of there it's a revolving piece kind of like a art piece that changes over time but I like the height on this month's era and I'll probably end up putting something kind of lower and just that has a little bit more mass and volume underneath it to highlight the green but right now I didn't do it so I just want to show you that that's the general idea that you got something good to look at when you walk in the front door do you look to your right like oh do they eat there who do they propagate there what the heck did these people do in this house that's what they probably ask okay let's move on let's move on to the corner so in this I come on do the psychist in this corner here I put this philodendron Chordata and I also put it on a podium because I want to fill that corner with height I forgot what I had there last year I'll show you some pictures of what it looked like over the years and yeah it's probably gonna be a lot of different types imagery they change it a lot and also throughout that time I've discovered what lives and what doesn't so as you can see on this buffet table I actually cut the legs off of it like about three inches so it could be a little bit lower and I kind of regret doing that but on the buffet table there is a buffet plant material and last year I had a bunch of clay Thea on it and it looks good but I had to keep the humidity up in here and a humidifier so and I know everybody was very concerned about the oil painting behind me it wasn't that humid and it really wasn't affecting the oil painting but I did move it some putting the clay Thea in a plant studio and I'm putting them in different areas like the office that I have over there and so I just decided to keep a glia Nemeth even from diffenbach you to keep to keep Sansevieria and ferns I might have to rethink the fern thing because I don't think they're gonna do so well here I don't know I'm giving it a shot the minute I see them starting to decline they're gone I mean they're going to a different spot so anyway so I'm just trying to create different values here of green and have different heights that will you know kind of help hide the white wall now that I don't like white walls but I feel like too much white in a space is really sterile and I want to avoid that the goal here was to have kind of a green accent wall without painting the wall green I'm trying to do that the other thing I have here it's going to show you something I mean come on so behind this ficus that is definitely not gonna last here I'm going to move you just relax it's gonna be okay I have this crazy mirror thing that I made a long time ago it's a mirror mosaic and I think it's pretty cool I don't have another one down in the basement so maybe I'll bring another one up and make it a little crazier in here but yeah I made that I can show you a close-up of that here but that was during my manic days oh I might still be a little manic okay so let's let's go to the office I didn't do too much in there but let's I'll just show you what what's going on okay so behind me is the office which at this point in time I just put my makeup on in here it's kind of a shame I know when I starts getting a little bit colder I'll be working in here more often but I've been working in the garage really I have my computer set up in there and that's where I do a lot of the work for the upcoming business so and the current business or whatever I just I work there so anyway behind me is the office and I think I did a video on this and I liked the way it looked so I really didn't change it much the only thing that I've really added was I've added this this monstera at a Sony I that I stumbled across and I had to have because it's so big and it's so lush so I thought it was perfect for that corner I still need to add a hanging plant over it but something kind of short and shallow that won't kind of dominate that space so I'm still looking for a plant for that area because I love the way plants look when they're kind of cutting horizontal lines of shelving or furniture so if you can break that line it just gives your eye a little bit more variety and choices of things to look at and who doesn't like looking at Brazil philodendron I love them I think they're becoming like my favorite vine I absolutely love the color and the structure and the leaf shape everything about it and the way they grow they grow like bunkers they grow like nuts so anyway so that's what I'm doing here I did I mean if you want to talk about low-light plants which I forgetting to talk about that's what this video is kind of about this parlor palm over here does pretty well in lower light again it does need a considerable amount of light in short of being in a closet right it really should have at least four hours of sunlight a day but this this again is a west-facing window or room and it gets a considerable amount of light in the afternoon so I just what I've I just leave the lights on during the day because I feel like it works I don't know what it is they just seemed and they're just regular LED like so I took the grow lights out that were in the ceiling because they stunk they were so low and they weren't working I don't know a lot of you guys have been asking me what grow lights I'm using I'm still experiment experimenting with them I really don't have an answer yet because there are so many different types and I've talked about this in every video but it's true I don't know yet but so far so good so yeah what I've done here is pretty much a Danica lethea or to change the water out on the snake plants because I keep getting I do see a little root coming out which is great and really that's kinda good I cleaned it up a little bit I'm just trying to get rid of things that aren't doing well in my house because what's the point what's the point of like making yourself feel anxious when you walk when you're watching a plant decline so you know over a few years you're going to know what works and doesn't work and don't beat yourself up if it doesn't work just move the plant if you can or just don't buy that planting and buy something else there's plenty of plants out there that will work in your space I have these fish hooks over here that don't belong it's like which of these objects don't belong remember that from that kids show I think didn't I just say that another video I'm having a deja vu man on remember so yeah that doesn't belong I just put it there because I think I was taking a picture for Instagram or something or I thought I was going to and the pictures stunk so I didn't use it so you can try to put things in that like a little bit more light in an area that has lower light and if it starts declining move it try is you never know I mean I've tried the light meter thing doesn't work for me it was reading like terrible readings and for some reason my plants are living and growing so push it a little bit push the envelope and if you start seeing that there's a discoloration and leaves or they're not growing or they just look bad move a closer to the window so you know keep in mind a mental log of when you move something and just keep your eyes on it because it's possible you need to move it pretty soon so that's the office so let's go to the living room okay the living room is where I need to be really careful because the family uses the space a lot and I did a bold move I made a bold move I took the television out and my husband still hasn't noticed it when he does he's gonna have a cow and I'm gonna have to put it back but I keep trying because I like kind of a television free zone in the house especially when you have guests over and you just want to talk you don't want to be distracted so anyway I'm gonna lose that battle I'm gonna keep trying though so what I've done here is I'll start with this little area is that I had a table that I put in there awhile ago and I didn't really like the table but it was there and it had a lot of surface area so I can get a lot of plants on it so I took it out and I put that piece that my father gave me this was very generous and my mother my stepmother very generous with their furniture and I like it I'm getting knees to it there is pretty low so I'm not really sure if that works but what I did to kind of just bring up the volume a little bit to bring up the height I had those macrame rings that I spray painted black and I'm getting this cool golden pothos to grow up like a chain it's like a rain chain that you see I'm gutter I love that look I was going to do the whole wall like that and I still might but it's just the beginning of the thought process I'm really trying to think about what's going to make that space look good and also still allow us to get the Christmas tree up that's gonna be a challenge it's gonna be a challenge so I put on a few low-light plans actually I didn't there is a Dracaena Jonny Craig which locks a which likes a lot of light I'm gonna have to move that it just looks good I'm gonna keep it there for a little bit and then when it starts really declining I'm going to move it and then I have a Z Z plant then Z a Z Z then Z and that it I have three plants there that's not a lot but that's okay because when you walk into the space I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by foliage kind of I kind of do but um walking on a fine line here you know without offending people that live in the house and also having a place I like to call home so let's look at more of a living room okay I don't know about you guys but I move things around a lot I redecorate a lot and I'm really guilty of doing that with plants so you will see this look at this way for a while and in the past it has looks so many different ways and I'm going to show you some imagery and you know say like you're out of your mind maybe but the thing here is is that it's okay to move plants it's okay to change plants if a planet dies the place it was something that you think might live better in that space and that's the key issue here is to just get to understand your space and your light requirements and then over time you'll know well plants will work so as you can see I'm showing you some different angles and different crazy ideas I had in the past because when you start out you're gonna think I want that I want that giant puddle Karpis which is still in my mind and I know I can't have it because if I bought that plant into my house it is a slow death and I don't want that to happen to those plants because it's not fair cuz it's not fair but if you think you might have enough light then you take this chance I know now I know I can't have that type of plant it's a total bummer and I wish I could and I wish I built this house differently in retrospect but I didn't so anyway I have to work with what I have and and what I can get in the future so that's it so this living room structurally hasn't changed I haven't done much to is I think when I designed it I designed it the way I like it like it rustic with some modern elements and you know and then the plants just add life to it they add hey stop it oh here she comes to the mat the camera over she's big she's big they had like as pets and families do as well and friends and anyway the point is just the plants will just there's nobody here yeah well maybe there's somebody here so yeah plants add life to your space so what I did here was I just wanted to get some more kind of jungly vibe on those bookshelves that I made out of barn wood and plumbing pipe and I rotate those plants because that is an extremely dark corner for some reason but the other thing I'm thinking about doing I have to do it is put grow lights in there I'll figure that out but for now I put plants like pocos philodendron and what else do I have they're gonna look I have a monster at a Sony eye which I keep putting back there and it keeps becoming not happy so I am moving closer to the window for a month then I put it back so this is like where I rotate my plants because I do love seeing that a hanging cascading vegetation but I also don't want to see them decline so they rotate what else do I have here I like have that Maranatha that lemon-lime mer anta I think it's called something else I have to put it down here to saw the other day love that plant so I brought that inside it was doing really well on the porch and then it was really well in the garage now it's gonna do well here I hope hold on and let another dog out so that I had yes then I have also the I don't know they tell me it's a little it's nd philodendron I didn't ever kind it is I think it was labeled wrong when I got it but it's growing like out like tendrils and it's a little less shiny but it's a vine too hard vine so I loved it and it's just moving forward into the space and that I loved and I had this one on the mantelpiece which I love too because it looks like a sculpture it seriously looks like better than a sculpture it is it's a living sculpture so I'm pretty happy with that and have a Majesty poem that you know what happens with those if you don't have the light they don't do well but I had them and have three more outside that I need to bring in but maybe I might give it to a friend who has more light cuz I know it's not gonna live here so that's it and I will probably add more plants here as time goes on because that's what happens all of a sudden one day they'll just be a jungle and then next month they'll be less plants it's just the way it goes in this house so that's fine it's fun I love doing that so yeah that's really it I have some stuff I got some stuff I don't have a lot of stuff because I feel like it's manageable and managing your plant collection is probably the most important thing I know a lot of people are starting at zero and going to a hundred in less than a few months that's great I I think that's what a lot of people are doing or have done but you just have to take it in baby steps because before you know what you just overrun by plants and you don't have time to make dinner or to take a shower and stuff like that because you'd rather or you feel like you should shower your plants before yourself and that's just bad hygiene so let's go stairs and see what's going on up there there's not a ton but well just look at it before we go upstairs I just wanted to show you guys this cool cart it's a good just real cart that my husband picked up for me at fair I didn't antique fair when I couldn't go one year and he was sending me pictures and negotiating when we got it down to uh Oh No okay I think I overpaid for it I think it was like $300 but I don't think I can find it in a cheap for anyplace else but I love it it's sturdy it's rustic I love it and I know how I know I love it because I haven't wanted to get rid of it or change it for a different one so that's something we found that I'm pretty excited about and also this chest or trunk or whatever you want to call it it has like a metal top on it and paint splatter or whatever and I saw somebody pulling out of a truck at a kind of a side road fair and I'm like whoo I want that and he had just found it and was gonna sell it but he sold it to me I think I paid $70 $70 for it um I love it I love it I would have paid more but I didn't want to tell him that and I know a few of you have asked me about the mantelpiece and I had made that with our neighbor who we used his kind of pretty amazing tool he has a great table saw and so he ripped that it's nice and it's coming apart a little bit but I can I can put some wood glue in it anyway so this is the floating mantelpiece shelf that I just wanted a modern element over this concrete treatment that I put on top of the dura Rock so that's what this this fireplace is it's just really Duroc with concrete on it and a wood hollow mental peace that's it okay so let's let's head upstairs and this is chubby chubbs how old are you I forgot do you like Thor he's four years old he's very sweet he has a crazy side I and he's just a really good dog you are but don't chase the neighbor's dogs but he's pretty easy to maintain he just needs some love you I love you Toby and here's a river river - no no she's busy she's busy she's always busy chewing I do a couple of things here I'm gonna get close to the camera because it's super echoey here I took that monstera I'm whispering I'm whispering my husband is sick and he's I feel bad I said I want to disturb him he's up in their room up here so let me get comfortable I took that monstera out of that wooden planter that I made because I he was starting to not like the wooden planter anymore thinking about making it white it was such a such a big chunky planter so I took it out and I put them on Stara in a basket I know not that original but I also wanted to get it closer to the window it was it was growing so tall because it was on that tall plant or starting to touch the ceiling and I really don't want to cut it and they gonna cut one leaf off of it just one so I moved that there I'm trying to create comfortable areas so I have this little sitting area here and also I moved to this red table over to the window because what's going to happen over the winter when the light becomes a lot more a lot less light I'm gonna have to move some of those planets to get that Eastern mourning legs I only have east light and west light really pretty much throughout the house so I need areas that I can bring those some loving type plants to the window good this upstairs is where I have most of the plants that like more light I do have a lot of low light plants but I also have medium light plants in here so that's that so what else do we have here so I moved that salome philodendron I know it's not a philan philodendron anymore as if the malapa Lee's or I don't remember the name I moved it into a darker corner because I'll tell you why I was thinking about just getting rid of it I was thinking about asking someone if they wanted it because it's get it was getting so leggy and wide and but I have to keep it because the nursery I got it from no longer exists and I would feel terrible so I put it in the corner and I will probably add another light I do leave the lights on here during the winter because it seems to help the plans I don't have any grow lights up here but that might change that might change over time so and what else we have here so I made this bar and a couple years ago and I'm happy that I didn't secure it to the floor because they move it a lot I shipped it I'll turn it like perpendicular or parallel to the wall depending on the mood I'm in and right now it's parallel to the wall but I'll probably move it back don't know why I do it I do it because I can do it and so I'm just trying to create some spaces in here that feel light and airy and also a little jungly and not overdo it as you can see here in years past and in past decorating frenzies I have put a lot on this plate put a lot in this room and it was great but it was becoming to be too much work to be honest with you it was just getting it was too much and sometimes I don't come up here because I'm working downstairs a lot or I'm gone and it just becomes a whole other area to stress out about when you're not around so I'm trying to make it manageable so what I'm not here it's easier for people to take care of and also you can enjoy it and I felt like being in a jungle too much you weren't really appreciating each plant for what it had to offer so that was kind of an issue still a lot of plants for most people but if your plant are a plant hoarder like I am you have to step back sometimes and just say enough is enough you can maybe say maybe you don't anyway so that's what's going on here so in this corner I put them on Stara up on that table I like the way it looks and I some skins abscess I have philodendron lemon-lime I have a post I think that's a Pozos no I said philodendron that's a philodendron yeah so anyway whatever I get can be I get confused sometimes we all do do you remember this video do you remember doing this nook well I do and it's still functioning pretty well I do I try to do a few different things like I said I moved this Salome over here I love the way it fills this corner in and I was going to change out the terracotta pots that I put up on the wall hangers here but I didn't what I try to do they try to glue saucers to the bottom with epoxy and they all fell off I thought I think this is the best decision this is gonna be great it was a total fail so anyway it happens you fail but you gotta try you just have to try so this gets a lot of light in the afternoon I think it's about what time it is right now one o'clock so you see the lights are into streaming it's hard because I have this light here and you can't see what's going on there but it does the cactus the cacti are or living and they've been there a couple of years now and yes let's go take a closer look basically what I do is I rotate these guys so this spider plant will get moved to here where this Pozos is and this marble cream pothos I've got some spotting but it needs to be moved this guy isn't doing so well cuz I forgot to water it it happens yeah and I've got a little monstera cutting on my soda I Sylla dendron is doing pretty well and I had the Hoyas these toys actually love it here because they were getting great great light my lipstick plant and string of dolphins but not so many dolphins on it this will yeah this little corner is pretty much a plant corner nobody uses it nobody comes in here it's just a place to look at I thought maybe I'd sit there but I'm wrong I am not sitting there ever in this string of parts look at this thing it is ridiculous it's like wait yeah that's what I'll do I'll have it go like that like that and then start routing in its own pot yeah that's ridiculous okay so I just want to show you this space um it hasn't changed much maybe I think I took a few plants out and that's it just trying to keep it a little clean yeah I have this bird caged and I still haven't done anything with I'll get there I'll get there and also I have to work on this on this area this is super pretty it just needs some plants and need some decoration oh no I don't know no what do you think chubbs what do you think you like just leave me alone get back to your plants okay so then we've got this corner here see work in progress work in progress so sad mm-hmm and here's the other corner the other nook yeah you know I've taken some plants out as you can see it's pretty sparse but I think it still looks pretty microwave linear system and well I still have my dead plant still dead still dead in my peperomia these guys are doing well yeah again I'm just trying to oh this string of hurts does this need water no I think it's okay there's a couple of dry leaves on it it's not bad my way of Cronos a compacta still alive so yes this is a sunnier spot although it looks dark it's just cuz I didn't bring the lights in it gets a lot of indirect sunlight here that's that's my that's my that's what's happening so the low lights I have in this space are is a glioma this silver Bay which I'm telling you you cannot kill this plant and I have wrong all these cascading plants here I'm getting tired tired hmm does not forget about our giant golden pothos that unfortunately the leaves are growing not so big so which tells me it needs more light but I just can't give it to it look at it's crawling up my wall it is attached itself to my wall ooh well I just ruined that sorry and I'm allowing it to grow on this table which i think is gonna be really cool-looking so I've got this one crawling up this one crawling down and it's gonna look good then also encouraging these where we have this actually is No oh it is look it's a Brazil philodendron and the golden pothos and it's a skinned abscess pictus I want them to grow on this other bird cage sand because I don't know what else to do with it I wanted to hang it maybe I'll hang something off of it as you can tell it's a work in progress it's a work in progress we got these guys up here this string of Hearts likes this corner so I'm gonna leave you there maybe just Tina so you know I have a lot of kind of common plants that um you know they just do well and that's why I have them I plant I choose plants that do well in my space and I'm kind of avoiding getting plants that just because I love the look doesn't this really mean it's gonna live here and here's another one that's going to be living up here this is another golden pothos that I had on a pole outside and I decided as I take it off the pole and I don't do something climbing on the wall I don't know as you can tell I gotta think about stuff before I do it you gotta think about things before you do it here's an update remember that no light room I did guess what it's like a weird storage area at this point and my son used it for like a video game room and I'm gonna make a closet that because I kept leaving the lights on for the plans and somebody kept turning them off and so I said I'm not I'm not gonna battle I'm not gonna try to win a battle so I just moved the plants out anyway that was that I lost that one too well I'm gonna wrap it up here because it's time I know when I start getting tired it means the videos getting too long anyway but thanks for coming thanks for joining thanks for watching and I just really wanted to show you what low-light plants to do well in my home and remembering that they're low light tolerant they tolerate low light they don't necessarily want to be in low light so if you have more light to offer give it to them because they will really really appreciate it thank you guys have an amazing weekend I'll see you soon thank you bye

Channel: PLANTERINA

Views: 364,343

Rating: 4.9152293 out of 5

Keywords: Low light houseplants, low light plants, low light indoor plants, houseplants, house plants, indoor plants, plant styling, houseplant tour, interior design with plants, best houseplants, best indoor plants, easy care houseplants, easy care plants, best plants for low light, how to plant style, ideas for indoor plant styling

Id: YiMI23EpVDk

Length: 35min 3sec (2103 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019