When it comes to home decorating, it’s the details that make the difference. Remember when you first moved into your home and took the time to match your paint or wallpaper to your window coverings? The same idea can be applied with indoor garden design. In fact, houseplants are among the essential design elements. Best of all, they’re affordable and easy to work with!
Look for foliage that’s similar to your fabric patterns and surface textures, selecting colors that complement, match or contrast with your room’s décor.
Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Choose containers suited to the selected plants, matching them with the color and décor found in your room.
Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Match decorative elements and art to your houseplants to unify a room and establish a theme. Here, a framed painting of a Tuscan street featuring hanging geranium planters combine with a table plant to make a bold visual statement.
Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Coordinating houseplants and their containers with wallpaper borders and colors brings a room’s overall theme together beautifully.
Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Most furnishings and architectural aspects involve hard surfaces and straight lines. Much like fabrics, houseplants add softness and depth to a space. And just like textiles, foliage comes in a stunning array of shapes, textures and colors. Just take a look at the wide range of leaves – from the thin, pointy fronds of various palms and the elegant, feathery foliage of maidenhair fern to the big, bold, colorful foliage of bird-of-paradise. When decorating with plants, you’ll be amazed at how easily foliage can match draperies and upholstery. (Some plant foliage even resembles fabric, including the soft leaves of the aptly named purple velvet plant, coleus and begonias.)
And with all the different colors and variegated options out there, making houseplants a part of your home’s décor is an affordable snap! Highlight purple floral wallpaper with purple African violets set in an ivory-colored antique dish, for example. Or put a basket of pink polka-dot plant in a bathroom with hot pink-painted walls, then add bright pink and green towels for even more color intensity.
In a solarium with butter-yellow walls and green garden furniture, choices abound for matching foliage and bloom color: Emphasize plants with graceful foliage such as Ficus benjamina, various ferns and large palms. Offset yellow walls with flowering plants in bright colors, like anthurium, goldfish plant and lipstick plant. Or bring out those yellow tones by introducing a light green and cream arrangement, using arrowhead vine, variegated green and yellow ivy, and a white or yellow orchid, creating a soft palette that blends the hues together.
You can also achieve dazzling results by echoing botanical prints or wallpaper in your indoor garden design. For instance, match a wallpaper border that has a grape ivy motif with an actual hanging basket overflowing with grape ivy. Or offset herb-themed wallpaper or a framed botanical print in your kitchen with a windowsill herb garden.
Augment specific styles or themes when choosing plants for your indoor garden design as well. Cacti, various succulents and some dracaenas make great accompaniments to a room that has a Southwest flair. For a contemporary interior, use specimen orchids and plants with bold colors and straight lines, like Sansevieria or ponytail palm. Play the bold, green leaves and orange and blue flowers of bird-of-paradise off a jungle-themed bedroom (and plant it in a rattan pot for added effect). Add a mature corn plant – with its brown, leathery single stem and graceful variegated foliage – to a room that has organic features, like wicker furniture, rattan-patterned wallpaper and bamboo flooring. And a study with modern teak furniture takes on a whole new vibrant look when highlighted by forced bulbs in glass containers filled with rocks. (Good choices for forcing include tulips, crocus and hyacinth.)
Decorating with plants can also be used to create attractive transitions in your home. Separate a light-colored, airy living room from a dark hallway using a row of indoor palms, for example. Or make the transition from hallway to living room complete by adding a variegated foliage plant, like a pink and green caladium, in the center of the coffee table. Are you in need of a frame to create interest for a ho-hum window? Create a foliage border out of pothos or trailing philodendron that you can look through to the outdoors.
No matter what your home’s décor, remember that the best indoor garden designs are those with a central theme. Even if your plants have varied heights, foliage forms or bloom colors, they can still work well together if they complete an overall motif, blend colors attractively or offer an attractive sculptural quality.
Not sure where to start? Begin by arranging houseplants in groups, starting with coordinated containers and maybe even a plant stand with varied levels. Then choose one or more of the popular options shown in the following pictures and described in their captions to apply to the various rooms of your home.
Whatever you choose, make your home vibrant and unique by taking advantage of the wide array of plant foliage styles, colors and textures – and don’t be afraid to play them off your wall and trim colors, window treatments, floor coverings and fabrics. When it comes to indoor garden design and playing up your living décor, your possibilities are nearly endless.
