Bathroom Plants: The Best Humidity-Loving Plants & How to Style Them

Your Bathroom Is Already a Greenhouse

Gro Urban Oasis has been helping customers style their bathrooms with plants for many years. Bathrooms make surprisingly good indoor greenhouses. They trap warmth, fill with steam every time someone showers, and the light through a bathroom window, even a small frosted one, is usually soft and diffused. Most houseplants that struggle in dry heated living rooms will thrive in the steamy microclimate of a bathroom.

The plants to reach for are the tropicals — ferns, peace lilies, orchids and devil's ivy. The ones to leave on the shelf are succulents and cacti, which want dry air and direct sun and will rot quietly in a room that never fully dries out.

How to Style a Bathroom with Plants

Styling a bathroom with plants is one of the easiest ways to make the room feel like a day spa rather than just a functional space. If your bathroom is small, think vertically: a hanging planter above the bath, a narrow plant stand in the corner, or a row of small pots on a floating shelf above the towel rail. Even one well-placed plant changes the feel of the room entirely.

Keep the pot as considered as the plant. A single tone across your indoor pots lets the foliage do the work, and echoes the same restraint that makes a calm bathroom palette read as intentional rather than accidental.

Caring for Your Bathroom Plants

The bathroom environment does half the work for you. Humidity from showers slows down how quickly the soil dries out, so overwatering is the most common mistake. Always check the top two centimetres of soil with your finger before watering.

Getting the Watering Right

Which Plants Actually Absorb Humidity?

All tropical plants absorb some moisture through their leaves, but the standouts for a steamy bathroom are Boston Ferns, Peace Lilies and Spider Plants. Boston Ferns are the best of the three — their fine, dense fronds create a large surface area that captures humidity efficiently. Peace Lilies have broad leaves that absorb ambient moisture, making them ideal for bathrooms prone to dampness. Spider Plants are smaller but equally effective, and they produce trailing babies you can propagate for other rooms.

How to Feed Your Bathroom Plants

Liquid fertiliser added once a month during spring and summer is the easiest approach. Flowering plants like Peace Lilies and Moth Orchids need extra potassium to encourage blooms — Thrive for Flower and Fruit works well for these. Leafy green plants are happy with We the Wild, a quality organic option.