Live vs artificial plants: which are the best for your office or house?

These days there is very little to choose between real or replica plants, visually at least. Artificial indoor plants are now high-quality products which look so lifelike you normally need to touch them to tell if they are real or not.

But both live and artificial indoor plants have a role to play, depending on where you want to put them and what you want them for.

On the one hand, artificial plants have a lot of obvious benefits. Aside from a bit of dusting every now and then, they need no maintenance, are robust, and can sit even in the darkest corner of your office or home. What’s more, where you may not be able to have the live plant you had your eye on because the location is too dark/light/cold/hot, your artificial plant can go anywhere and still look good.

So, if artificial plants look like the real thing, require no care on your part and can go anywhere, why on earth would you chose a live indoor plant?

In short: health benefits. That would be my number one reason for choosing a live office or houseplant.

Study after study (including ones by NASA) has shown that plants can make us feel better. We are less stressed and ill, more productive and creative, stay longer and relax more when we are around plants.

Now, some of these effects are from simply looking at plants, so artificial plants can also boost our mood in certain ways, but they cannot clean our air. Our indoor air contains many toxins, seeping out from machinery, soft furnishings and paints, to name a few.

What’s more, air conditioning and heating dry our air and send it often well below the recommended levels of humidity for a healthy environment.

These all impact on our health and general sense of wellbeing, but a few well-chosen and well-placed live indoor plants can clean our air of these toxins and improve the humidity levels in our room.

Imagine the difference this can make particularly for the many people who are stuck indoors for most of the working day.

So, in short, there are benefits to both artificial and live indoor plants, and the great thing from our point of view is that we offer both, so we are confident we have the right home or office plant for you!

See our pages on artificial and live indoor plant products and get inspired.