Learn how to cultivate a cool and cozy oasis with indoor plants with this post and create an eco-friendly garden in home.
Imagine you come home one sweltering day of summer, and instead of a cool, cozy home atmosphere, you’re met with stifling heat again. Pretty frustrating, right? While you can, of course, get a cooler or air conditioner, it will only increase your electricity bill. Instead of going that route, you should invest in some beautiful green beauties and cultivate a cool and cozy oasis with indoor plants! Here are some creative ideas that you can implement to do so.
Cultivate a Cool and Cozy Oasis With Indoor Plants
1) Group a Couple of Air-Purifying, Cooling Plants
The very first way that you can create a cool oasis with your indoor plants is by selecting ones that can purify the air as well as cool it. Some excellent choices that you can consider are snake plants, spider plants, peace lilies, and more. First off, the low-maintenance snake plant can charm up your whole house with its air-purifying qualities. Plus, it releases moisture at night, contributing to a cooler environment. Meanwhile, both the peace lily and spider plants help purify the indoor air from toxins like benzene, formaldehyde, etc. The best thing you can do is group all of these plants together to create a high-humidity microclimate that ultimately creates a localized cooling effect.
2) Create a Cool Work Environment
In this world of remote culture, you can optimize your workspace according to your needs and comfort. Use that to your advantage by making your workspace more appealing with living green beauty. Placing your plants near the window of your office is quite a strategic location for blocking direct sunlight and preventing excessive heat gain within your home. Besides that, electronics can often heat up your home. Placing plants near electronics can help absorb some of this heat, contributing to a cooler environment. This essentially means that you will be positioning plants strategically to take advantage of airflow patterns within your home, thus allowing the circulation of cool air.
3) Create a Chilled Retreat to Relax
One thing we all look forward to at the end of a long workday is coming home and relaxing in a comfortable nook. But you can’t really do that if your home is stifling hot. To ensure a relaxing retreat for the end of the day, get some lush green houseplants beside your recliner, where you can cozy up with your favorite book.
Feeling a little creative? Choose houseplants of different shapes, sizes, and colors to amp up your cool retreat. Add furnishings and artwork in your favorite colors that will make you want to spend time there.
4) Amp Up Your Hallway
When you have a smaller home or apartment, you really do not need to get creative and add houseplants to every nook and cranny. All you have to do is create a cool, calm oasis right in the hallways and feel its effects all around the house! Feel like your hallways are too blasé? Add some plants to act as focal points, hang some of your favorite artwork all around, and add any more decorative knickknacks like books, etc., that you might prefer. Thus, you get a cool and beautiful hallway!
5) Mix and Match Different Types of Plants
A cool and cozy oasis doesn’t necessarily mean sticking with all-green plants. Let your creativity flow and combine plants with different colors, leaf shapes, variegations, and patterns to create a compelling display while also enjoying the cool environment! Get even more innovative by adding complementary accessories around the plant pots, which could also be of different complementary colors. For example, if you add the speckled foliage of calla lily with the dots of caladium leaves, it can really spruce up your cozy plant display.
6) Create A Living Wall or Room Dividers
Yet another way to create a cool, calm oasis in a smaller apartment without using floor space while making it all look beautiful is by displaying them at different heights. You can use trailing plants in groups over a blank wall or room dividers with macrame plant hangers, such as at the entrance of your living room from the foyer, or to create a clear distinction between the dining room, living room, or kitchen. Not only does this create a stunning visual barrier, but it also allows for light and air to flow freely through the space. It’s a functional piece of art that brings a sense of the outdoors inside.
Wondering which plants would help cool your home environment besides looking beautiful? Your top choices would be ivy, philodendrons, or any variety of trailing ferns. These are low-maintenance yet can make for a gorgeous display.
7) Combine Art With Plant
No, we are not talking about normal art! Try displaying your plants in small spaces to create a cozy nook using the age-old art form called “kokedama,” “koke,” meaning “moss,” and “dama,” meaning ball, in Japanese. Kokedama is actually a type of bonsai where you encase a plant’s root system in moss and create a soil ball. Not only is this an excellent method to conserve space, but you can also hang these plants throughout your home from walls or ceilings, helping maintain a cool, cozy environment.
8) Think Of A Tropical Nook
If you’re looking to create a nook that is totally unique yet does the job of cooling your home, tropical plants can be your best bet! Choose palm trees that evoke tropical images of sun-drenched beaches in your mind, which are excellent for turning your home into a tropical sanctuary. Every time you come home from work, you can now experience the luxury and calmness of being on a vacation! Some wonderful tropical plants that you can choose to grow indoors are the Areca palm or the Kentia palm, which can instantly make your room look exotic.
9) Large Plants For Large Spaces
Now that we have covered a lot of ideas on how you can create a cool and cozy oasis in small spaces, let’s talk about when you have a large home. Of course, it is not possible to cool an entire home with one corner of plants. However, if you want to maximize the cooling effect of your plants, even though they may be in a corner, choose some large species. The larger the surface areas of leaves, the greater the transpiration rate will be. This ultimately translates to better cooling of your room. One of the best plants for this purpose is the Monstera Deliciosa. Other interesting options are the Alocasia Polly, with arrow-shaped leaves of a meter in length, and Calathea Ornata, with pink and green leaves in striking patterns.
10) Best Plants For Your Bedroom
Of course, the most important place in your home is the bedroom. Without proper, restful sleep, it is impossible to function properly during the day, especially when work is hectic. This is why you must create a cozy, cool oasis in your bedroom with air-purifying, cooling plants that contribute to improved sleep. Some of the best plants that can help you in creating a more restful sleeping environment are the snake plant and aloe vera.
11) Plants For Green Curtains
While you can obviously get curtains to block out harsh sunlight from your home, they won’t really filter your indoor air or create a cooling effect. Thus, if you have a penchant for the unconventional, hang your favorite vining plants in front of a window! Not only will they get their adequate share of sunlight, casting intricate shadows across the room, but they will also provide a unique, leafy, cooling filter for your room.
