Indoor plants for every room come down to one thing: how much light the room actually gets, not what the room is called. A bathroom with no window needs suitable artificial light for long-term plant growth. Below: what suits a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, a desk and the dark corner nobody knows what to do with.
On this page
- The short version
- How do you match a plant to a room?
- What works in a living room?
- Which plants suit a bedroom?
- What actually survives an Australian bathroom?
- What are the best plants for a desk or home office?
- What can you put in a dark corner or hallway?
- Indoor plants for every room in Australian conditions
- Shop the room collections
- Room-by-room plant FAQs
The short version
- Match the light, not the room name. A north-facing wall is the bright one in Australia; a south-facing one is the dim one.
- Living room: one large plant in bright indirect light reads better than five small ones scattered around.
- Bedroom and desk: medium light, slow growth, and something that forgives a missed week.
- Bathroom: check light as well as humidity. A windowless bathroom needs a suitable grow light.
- Dark corner: Devil’s Ivy, Philodendron Brasil or a Power Petite Peace Lily, and expect slower growth than the same plant near a window.
| Room | What the room really is | Light to look for | Plants we’d pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| Living room | The brightest wall in the house | Bright, indirect, filtered sunlight | Monstera Deliciosa, Ficus Elastica Ruby |
| Bedroom | A curtained window and low traffic | Medium light, can tolerate shade | Baby Rubber Plant, Peace Lily Power Petite |
| Bathroom with a window | Warm, humid, bright for part of the day | Bright, indirect, filtered sunlight | Hurricane Fern, Peace Lily |
| Bathroom with no window | No usable natural light | Suitable grow light required | Choose a plant whose lighting needs the grow light can meet |
| Desk or home office | Aircon, a monitor and two days alone each weekend | Bright, indirect, filtered sunlight | Peperomia Red Edge, Philodendron Xanadu |
| Dark corner or hallway | Three metres from the nearest window | Medium light, can tolerate shade | Philodendron Brasil, Devil’s Ivy |
The light values in that table are the exact wording on the printed care card that comes with each plant, so you can match a room to a plant without translating anything.
How do you match a plant to a room?
Stand in the room at about 11am on a weekday and look at where the light lands. If you can read a paperback comfortably without a lamp, that’s a spot a plant will accept. If you’re squinting, it’s a low-light corner, whatever the room is called.
Then check the window aspect, because it does most of the work:
- North-facing is the brightest light you have in Australia, and the easiest home for anything wanting bright indirect light.
- East-facing gets gentle morning sun, which almost nothing objects to.
- West-facing gets hard afternoon sun through summer, and glass makes it worse. Sheer curtain, or set the plant back a metre.
- South-facing is the dim one. Treat it as a low-light room and choose accordingly.
If there’s a cat or a dog in the house, sort by that before you sort by looks. About three quarters of the plant lines we carry are toxic if chewed — 113 of the 154 we hold pet data on — so it’s a genuine filter rather than a footnote. Check the species in the ASPCA’s toxic and non-toxic plant database before you commit — that is also the database RSPCA Australia sends people to, since it keeps no plant list of its own. If something gets chewed anyway, ring your vet.
Last question, and it’s the one people skip: how often will you honestly water it? A plant that wants steady moisture in a house that travels is a slow disappointment.
What works in a living room?
Living rooms are usually the brightest room in the house and the one you look at most, so this is where a big plant earns its footprint. Monstera Deliciosa is the obvious pick and deserves to be: bright, indirect, filtered sunlight, water moderately and allow the top 3cm of soil to dry. Ours ship with a note about staking, because a Monstera in good light will lean out sideways looking for more.
For colour rather than scale, Ficus Elastica Ruby holds pink, cream and green on the same leaf and wants the same light. Both are not pet friendly: Monstera deliciosa is listed toxic to cats and dogs by the ASPCA, and the Ficus genus is toxic too, with Ficus benjamina the ASPCA’s listed entry for it. Keep both off the floor if the dog investigates everything.
One layout rule that changes a room more than the plant choice does: group three plants of different heights within a metre of each other, and the corner reads as intentional rather than accidental. A tall plant on the floor, something mid-height on a side table, a trailing one on the shelf above.
Our Indoor Plants for Living Room collection is that grouping already matched, pots included: a Giant Bird of Paradise, a Lady Palm and a Monstera Deliciosa. It is not a pet-friendly bundle — the Monstera in it is toxic if chewed — so in a house with a cat or a dog, buy the Lady Palm on its own instead.
Read the full guide → Large indoor plants for Australian homes
Which plants suit a bedroom?
Bedrooms are usually darker than people think. The curtain stays half closed, the window often faces the wrong way, and nobody wants a watering routine in the room they’re asleep in. Choose for medium light and neglect.
Baby Rubber Plant is our first suggestion: medium light, can tolerate shade, water sparingly and let the soil get almost dry. It’s also one of the few we can point at a database entry for, since Peperomia obtusifolia is listed non-toxic by the ASPCA. Never shorten its name to “rubber plant” when you’re checking toxicity, though. The ASPCA’s Indian Rubber Plant is Ficus benjamina, a different and genuinely toxic plant.
A Peace Lily Power Petite is the other one we’d put on a bedside table. It takes medium light, and it droops theatrically when it wants a drink, which is a useful trait in a room you only visit at night. It is not pet friendly — Spathiphyllum is listed toxic to cats and dogs — so it’s not one for a cat that grazes.
We won’t tell you a plant in the bedroom will help you sleep. There’s no evidence we’re willing to stand behind, and the honest reason to put one there is that you like looking at it.
Two plants, two pots, sized for a bedside table and a chest of drawers: the Bedroom Duo Pack pairs a variegated Ficus Benjamina with a Spider Plant. Read that pairing carefully before you buy it for a bedroom with an animal in it: the Spider Plant is fine, but Ficus benjamina is listed toxic to cats and dogs by the ASPCA, which makes the pack as a whole not pet friendly.
What actually survives an Australian bathroom?
There are two bathrooms, and they need different plants. A bathroom with a window is genuinely the easiest room in the house: warm, humid, and bright for part of the day. Hurricane Fern was built for it, with fronds that spiral out of a compact centre, and it takes bright, indirect, filtered sunlight with steady moisture. Its species, Asplenium antiquum, does not appear in the ASPCA’s toxic and non-toxic plant database at all, so the accurate wording is that it is not known to be toxic to cats or dogs — a statement about the paperwork rather than a clean bill of health, which is worth knowing in a room where the litter tray often lives. A Peace Lily does well in the same spot and flowers for longer than you’d expect, but it is not pet friendly.
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.
Brisbane and Darwin bathrooms hold humidity for most of the year with no help at all. In a Melbourne or Adelaide bathroom through winter, the steam from a shower is gone in twenty minutes and the room is cold by morning, so ferns there want a warmer spot than the tiles.
Our Bathroom Plant Collection is matched for the version with a window: a Peace Lily, a Bamboo Parlor Palm and a Baby Rubber Plant. The Peace Lily makes it a bundle to skip if a cat shares the bathroom.
Read the full guide → Bathroom plants that love humidity
What are the best plants for a desk or home office?
A desk is a hard brief. Aircon dries the air, the monitor blocks half the light, and the plant is on its own from Friday afternoon until Monday. Small and slow beats fast and thirsty.
Peperomia Red Edge is the one we reach for. Waxy heart-shaped leaves rimmed in red, bright indirect light, a drink when the top 3cm dries, and it grows slowly enough that it won’t outgrow the desk in a year. Peperomia clusiifolia is listed non-toxic by the ASPCA, which is handy in a shared office where nobody’s asked.
If the desk is in a brighter room, Philodendron Xanadu makes a tidy mound of deeply lobed leaves on the floor beside it and prefers to dry out between sparing drinks. It is not pet friendly — Philodendron is listed toxic to cats and dogs — so keep it out of reach of anything that chews.
For a whole shelf rather than one pot, the Plant Decor Collection for your Small Spaces is three Syngonium Pixies with pots sized to match. Worth saying plainly: Syngonium podophyllum is listed toxic to cats and dogs, so all three plants in that set are ones to keep out of reach.
Read the full guide → Small Indoor Plants: Enhancing Small Spaces With Greenery
What can you put in a dark corner or hallway?
Something, but be honest about what “dark” means. Three metres back from a south-facing window is low light. A windowless hallway with the door shut is not a room a plant lives in, and no amount of plant choice fixes it.
For genuine low light, Devil’s Ivy is the most forgiving thing in our catalogue.
“Devil by name, angel to look after — I’ll trail happily in low light and forgive almost any forgetfulness.” — from our Devil’s Ivy care card
Philodendron Brasil does the same job with a lime stripe down each leaf, and both take medium light and a sparing drink once the topsoil dries. Neither is pet friendly: Epipremnum aureum and Philodendron are both listed toxic to cats and dogs by the ASPCA (Devil’s Ivy, Philodendron), so keep the trailing vines above nose height if you have a puppy.
The important adjustment in a dark corner is water, not light. Less light means slower growth and slower drying, so the same plant that drank weekly by a window might want a fortnight in the corner. Overwatering a low-light plant is the most common way these end badly.
Read the full guide → Low-light indoor plants
Indoor plants for every room in Australian conditions
Most room-by-room plant advice online was written for the Northern Hemisphere, where south-facing is the bright side. Inverted for Australia it puts your Monstera in the dimmest corner of the house. North is bright here, south is dim, and west is the one that scorches leaves through glass from December to February.
Climate changes the answer as much as aspect does. Brisbane humidity means ferns and Calatheas hold their edges with no misting at all. Melbourne winter light is weak enough that a spot which reads as “bright indirect” in January is closer to medium light in July, so plants there tend to drift closer to the window over winter. Perth and Adelaide summer sun through a west window will burn a Fiddle Leaf Fig in an afternoon.
The seasons matter as much as the aspect does. Winter, June to August, is the low point of the year for growth: less water, no fertiliser, and nothing shuffled around. Spring runs September to November here, and that’s the window for repotting, resuming feeding and reassessing where the light falls, because the sun’s angle will have moved since you last thought about it.
One more cold-weather note. A plant sitting in the path of a heater or a cold draught will drop leaves faster than one in poor light, so check what’s blowing on it before you blame the corner.
Shop the room collections
If you’d rather not assemble a room yourself, our room collections are plants and pots already matched by room and by light, so nothing in a bundle is fighting the spot it’s going into. One thing to carry with you: none of the room bundles is a pet-friendly set. Each one contains at least one plant that is toxic if chewed, which is why the plant contents are spelled out in each section above rather than left to the product photo.
Everything is packed at our Queensland nursery in low-waste, plastic-free packaging, and every plant is backed by our 30-day plant guarantee, which covers a plant that arrives dead or damaged. Each one comes with a printed care card carrying the same light and water wording used in the table above, so it can go on the fridge and settle the argument later.
How it gets to you → How plant delivery works
Room-by-room plant FAQs
How many plants does one room need?
Three is usually the number where a room stops looking like it has a plant in it and starts looking planted. Vary the height rather than the species: one on the floor, one at table height, one trailing from above. In a small bedroom or a study, two is plenty, and one large plant beats four small pots on separate surfaces.
What can I grow in a room 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.
Should I move my plants around the house in winter?
Often, yes. Winter light in Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide is weak enough that a spot which worked in summer becomes medium light in July, so moving a plant a metre closer to the window helps. Two exceptions: Fiddle Leaf Figs sulk and drop leaves when shifted, and nothing wants to sit in front of a heater.
Which room should I start with if I’ve never kept a plant alive?
Start with the brightest room, because bright indirect light forgives most other mistakes. A Devil’s Ivy or a Baby Rubber Plant in a north-facing living room is the easiest combination we stock: both sit in our Easy-going tier, and both tell you when they’re thirsty. Save the bathroom and the dark hallway for the second and third plant.
The Good Plant Co nursery team · about us · Last updated 12 September 2026