The best plants for a bedroom in Australia are the ones that cope with medium light and forgiving watering: a Baby Rubber Plant, a petite Peace Lily, a Devil’s Ivy up high. Bedrooms are darker than they look, and nobody wants a watering roster where they sleep. Below: picks by light, spot and pet safety.
Why is a bedroom harder to plant than it looks?
Because the light lies. A bedroom window spends half its life behind a curtain, the bed claims the brightest wall, and a room that felt sunny at the inspection reads as medium light to a plant on its best day. Through winter, June to August, bedrooms in Melbourne and Adelaide dim further again.
The second problem is attention. The kitchen gets walked past twenty times a day; the bedroom gets remembered at bedtime, in the dark, when nobody is reaching for a watering can. A plant that needs a routine in that room is a plant already in trouble.
Choose according to the light and space you have, then check the product page for current sizes and availability. This is the bedroom instalment of our room-by-room plant guide.
Which are the best plants for a dark bedroom?
Dark means a curtained window, a shaded aspect or a south-facing room. The test is simple: if you can read a paperback on the bed at midday without a lamp, the four below will manage. If you can’t, the room has moved past “dark bedroom” into genuinely low light, and our guide to low light indoor plants is the honest place to start.
Baby Rubber Plant (Peperomia obtusifolia)
Light Medium light, can tolerate shade · Water Water sparingly, soil to be almost dry · Pets Listed non-toxic by the ASPCA
The safe first pick, and the one we’d send to almost any bedroom sight unseen. Glossy little leaves, content in a shadier corner, and it wants water only when the mix is almost dry, so a fortnight of being forgotten reads as good care. Its one limit is scale: this is a bedside or shelf plant, not a statement for the corner.
Peace Lily Power Petite
Light Medium light, can tolerate shade · Water Water moderately, allow the top 3cm of soil to dry · Pets Not pet friendly
If you want a plant that manages you, this is it. The Power Petite is a Peace Lily at bedside scale, glossy leaves and white blooms, and it solves the bedroom’s forgetting problem by refusing to be forgotten.
“I’m happy in medium light with a drink when my topsoil dries, and I’ll droop dramatically when I’m thirsty.” (from our Peace Lily Power Petite care card)
A drooping Peace Lily needs a moisture check before a drink: both dry and waterlogged mix can cause wilting. Keep it away from chewing pets.
Shop the Peace Lily Power Petite
Devil’s Ivy
Light Medium light, can tolerate shade · Water Water sparingly, soil to be almost dry · Pets Not pet friendly
Here’s the trailing option, and the top of the wardrobe is its natural habitat. Devil’s Ivy trails happily in lower light, forgives almost any forgetfulness, and prefers to dry right out between drinks, which is precisely the treatment a plant two metres off the floor tends to get. The vines are toxic to pets, though, and for a cat, height is a delay rather than a plan.
Spider Plant
Light Medium light, can tolerate shade · Water Water moderately, allow the top 3cm of soil to dry · Pets Listed non-toxic by the ASPCA
For a shelf or a hanger, and for households where the cat gets a vote. One of the easiest trailing plants around: medium light, a drink when the topsoil dries, and it spins out baby spiderettes you can pot up for the next room. Fair warning, many cats find the arching leaves fascinating, which is a reason to keep the plant out of chewing reach. Even non-toxic plants can cause an upset stomach if eaten.
Which plants suit a brighter bedroom?
Bright means the window sees open sky for part of the day and the curtain actually gets opened. In Australia that’s usually a north or east-facing room, and it widens the field to plants that want bright, indirect light.
Peperomia Red Edge
Light Bright, indirect, filtered sunlight · Water Water moderately, allow the top 3cm of soil to dry · Pets Listed non-toxic by the ASPCA
A windowsill plant in the most literal sense: waxy, heart-shaped leaves trimmed in red that hold their colour in bright indirect light. It grows slowly, which on a sill is a feature, because it won’t outgrow the spot by Christmas. Water when the top 3cm of mix is dry, and otherwise leave it to it.
Happy Plant
Light Bright, indirect, filtered sunlight · Water Water moderately, allow the top 3cm of soil to dry · Pets Not pet friendly
The floor-corner pick, for a bedroom with light to spare. Arching, yellow-striped leaves on an upright frame make it the one plant on this list that can furnish a room by itself. It is toxic to pets, and a floor pot sits exactly at nose height for a curious dog, so treat this one as a pet-free-room plant rather than an out-of-reach one.
Where does each plant go?
Match the plant to the spot, not the other way around. The table is the short version.
| Spot | Pick | Why it works there |
|---|---|---|
| Bedside table | Peace Lily Power Petite or Baby Rubber Plant | Small footprint, and the Peace Lily tells you when it’s thirsty |
| Windowsill | Peperomia Red Edge | Slow and tidy, and the sill is the brightest seat in the room |
| Wardrobe top | Devil’s Ivy | Trails for metres over time and copes with being forgotten up high |
| Shelf or hanger | Spider Plant | Trails without demanding the window |
| Floor corner | Happy Plant | Tall enough to fill the corner on its own, given real light |
Two practicalities. Anything above head height gets watered at the sink, drained properly, then carried back, because a dripping wardrobe pot always finds the one thing below it you care about. And open the curtain when you leave in the morning: that curtain decides the plant’s entire light budget.
Which bedroom plants are pet-safe?
Three of the six, and we keep the wording precise because pet claims deserve precision:
- Baby Rubber Plant (Peperomia obtusifolia): listed non-toxic by the ASPCA.
- Peperomia Red Edge (Peperomia clusiifolia): listed non-toxic by the ASPCA.
- Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum): listed non-toxic by the ASPCA.
The other three are not: Peace Lily Power Petite, Devil’s Ivy and Happy Plant are all toxic to a cat or dog that chews them, so they stay out of reach or out of the room. And be honest about what “out of reach” means at your place. A wardrobe top slows a dog down; a cat treats it as an invitation. If the cat sleeps on your bed, choose from the safe three.
Do bedroom plants help you sleep?
We’re not going to tell you they do. The internet is full of claims that plants improve sleep and scrub bedroom air, and a plant shop repeating them is exactly how those claims stay alive. We sell the plants, and we still won’t say it.
Here’s the honest version: the reason to put a plant in your bedroom is that you like looking at it. It’s the first thing you see when the alarm goes off, it changes a little every week, and it makes the room feel finished. That’s the whole pitch, and it’s enough.
One box, both bedside tables
If you’d rather not assemble the shortlist yourself, the Bedroom Duo Pack dresses a bedroom in one order: a large variegated Ficus Benjamina and a medium Spider Plant, each with a matching Pierre White pot, sized for a chest of drawers and a bedside table.
Two things to know before you buy it for a bedroom. The Ficus is the bright half of the pair, wanting bright light with some direct sun, and it drops leaves when it gets shuffled around, so it needs the best window in the room and then to be left where it stands. And on pets, the pack is mixed: the Spider Plant is listed non-toxic by the ASPCA, but Ficus benjamina is listed toxic to cats and dogs, which makes the pack as a whole not pet friendly. If an animal sleeps in the room, buy from the safe three above instead.
Like everything we send, it’s dispatched from our Queensland nursery in low-waste, plastic-free packaging with a printed care card for each plant, arrives in typically 3–5 business days of courier transit to most metro areas after dispatch, plus packing time, and is backed by our 30-day plant guarantee.
Bedroom plant FAQs
Do plants use up your oxygen at night?
Plants do respire overnight, the same as everything alive, but we don’t make claims about plants and bedroom air in either direction, so we won’t dress that up as a warning or a benefit. Nobody at our nursery has ever lost sleep over a Peperomia on the bedside table. If the air in the room bothers you, the window is the tool; the plant is decoration.
Can a plant survive in a bedroom with no window?
A windowless room needs a suitable grow light if plants are to live there long-term. Shade tolerance still requires usable light; rotating plants into darkness is not a dependable care plan. Otherwise, keep them in a brighter room. See the RHS guide to artificial lighting.
Is a peace lily safe to keep in a bedroom?
A Peace Lily can grow in a bedroom with suitable light, but it is not safe to chew. Keep it away from pets and young children, and choose a non-toxic alternative if you cannot prevent access.
The Good Plant Co nursery team · our roots · Last updated 12 September 2026