House Plants with Air Purifying Benefits for a Cleaner Home

House Plants are Making a Comeback in a Big Way

By Gina LiVorio Posted on 6/2/2021

House plants are an interior design trend that brings the outdoors inside, livening up spaces and giving them a more natural look. This trend has risen in popularity in the last few years, and it isn’t difficult to see why. House plants not only add color and texture to your interior design, but they also provide health benefits.

Considering the amount of time we spend indoors, filling our homes with natural beauty that also benefits our health is a win-win. Place light-loving house plants in your home, as well as house plants that can survive low light conditions, to help contribute towards more purified air indoors.

NASA’s Clean Air Study on Air Purifying House Plants

When NASA’s Clean Air Study from 1989 first came out, which found that certain house plants can rid your home’s air from toxins and purify the air, plants became mainstays in people’s home across the U.S.  The study was first conducted to find ways to clean the air in NASA’s space stations. However, it was done in a sealed space station environment, so its results weren’t as accurate as they were initially taken to be.

A follow-up study has since been published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology in 2019, and concluded that we would need an excessive amount of plants for air purification to have any sort of impact – over 90 plants to be exact.

Nonetheless, house plants do technically contribute to air purification, and it doesn’t hurt to have them around.

More Health Benefits of House Plants

While NASA’s study was proven wrong, we still think having house plants around is beneficial enough to be worthwhile. After all, house plants have more health benefits than just removing toxins from the air. More health benefits of house plants include:

  • Improved mood
  • Reduced stress and anxiety
  • Reduced fatigue
  • Sharpened focus
  • Quicker recovery from illness

List of House Plants That Freshen the Air

If the science behind house plants and their many benefits to our health is intriguing, it’s time to start considering which house plants to buy. Below is a list of air plants to help freshen your air and enhance your health.

  • Mother-In-Law’s Tongue
  • Weeping Fig
  • Chinese Evergreen
  • Boston Fern
  • Spider Plant
  • Bamboo Palm
  • Rubber Tree
  • Aloe Vera
  • Chrysanthemum
  • English Ivy
  • Peace Lily
  • Devil’s Ivy
  • Dwarf Date Palm
  • Dracaena
  • Kentia Palm
  • Pineapple Plant
  • Scarlet Star Bromeliad
  • Areca Palm
  • Cacti

How Does Our Indoor Air Get Polluted?

With all this talk about enhancing the air quality indoors, it’s natural to ask the question of how our indoor environments get polluted in the first place.

The indoor air gets polluted from the release of toxic gases within our homes, caused by chemicals like detergents, air fresheners, chemicals in furniture fabrics, and chemical-based cleaning products. It’s best to do everything in our power to combat those contaminants for the freshest air possible indoors, because these pollutants can contribute to the deterioration of our health over time.

It’s not surprising that indoor air is 2-5 times more toxic than outdoor air. If having indoor plants can help those statistics rather than hurt them, then we’re certainly on the right track.

We can live a more natural lifestyle at home to help reduce indoor air pollution and having house plants is just one of the many ways we can do so.

House Plants Conclusion

House plants increase the oxygen levels in your home and elicit a calming effect, good for mind, body and spirit. Bringing a piece of the outdoors inside will freshen up your space and contribute to better air quality. Not to mention all of the above plants will look great in your home and make you want to take the garden outdoors!

 

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