How to Increase Humidity for Houseplants? Step By Step Guide

If you do not drink water for a long time or do not get enough water you need, will you be healthy? Will you glow the way you were before?

So what’s the question now? How to Increase Humidity for Houseplants?

1. Try To Mist Your Plants
2. Decorate Your Plants GroupWise
3. Use a Humidifier In Your Home
4. Use Terrariums or Pebble Trays
5. Place Your Houseplants In The Most Humid Area
6. You Can Simply Give Bath to Your Plants
7. Put a Coverage on Your Plants

Of course not. So, like our body, our houseplants need water, or you can say, humidity to be healthy.

Houseplants are something that we grow to enhance our home’s beauty and bring nature into our territory. But if you cannot provide them the nurture they need, they will fade away, and so your home.

How to Increase Humidity for Houseplants?

Some plants grow in the tropical region while growing outside, and the environment of the forest or jungle environment provides them the perfect humidity to grow and be fresh. But when you want them to grow inside your house, you have to be very careful about the temperature and humidity.

Step 1 – Try To Mist Your Plants

You want to know “how to increase humidity for houseplants?” this is the first step you can take to increase the humidity.

Misting your plants may be the quick and easiest way to increase humidity for houseplants. Try to spread water on your houseplant the way you drink water daily. Do not pour water directly on the plants. Use a sprayer that will evenly distribute the spreading water on the leaves of plants, or you can use your hands as well.

This will prevent the plants from drying out and being brittle. Try to mist the plants thrice a day according to the weather outside. If it’s Winter, do it regularly because the air remains cold and has less humidity, and if it’s a rainy day, do occasionally. Mist your plants once or twice when it’s summer.

Misting in the morning is the best. If you spray water on your houseplants early in the morning, the excess water gets enough time to evaporate by sunlight. It will also prevent your plants from fungal or bacterial growth.

If you have any plant with hairy leaves, do not mist too much because the hairy leaves accumulate the water in one place and may cause fungal production or other problems.

Do not water them more often as too much water can cause diseases to your plants.

Try to spray water in a place away from wooden furniture in your house. Water can damage or cause discoloration. Better if you water them in the bathroom or sink.

Step 2 – Decorate Your Plants Group Wise

As you asked, “how to increase humidity for houseplants?” we are providing steps and ideas to help you. But this one is not enough efficient to increase the humidity for houseplants. 

Have you ever feel the humidity while walking through a forest?

It is because in a forest all the plants are located near one another. If many plants grow closely in one place, the air is released from the plants by transpiration and humid the atmosphere.

Similarly, if you keep your plants together in a place, it will naturally increase the humidity of that area by transpiration. It is the natural way to increase humidity in the air for houseplants.

But some drawbacks are there in this way. Not everyone wants to put all of their plants in one place but spread at every corner of the house. For them, this trick will not work.

Step 3 – Use a Humidifier In Your Home

You wanted to know “how to increase humidity for houseplants?” Right? This is the best way to do it.

If you don’t want any hassle for keeping your houseplants humid but want them to grow well and fresh, you have no other option but to bring a humidifier for your home!

A humidifier will refresh your home, your houseplants, and you too.

Many people might concern that their home will get so humid that microbial growth or damage to furniture can be occurred by using a humidifier.  This situation has a solution as well. If you keep your humidifier in an upper place where the humidity can be adequately spread, you can overcome microbial growth or any damage. Do not put a humidifier directly on the floor.

In Summer, a humidifier is not necessary for your plants. It can cause increased humidity above the normal range within your house, which can cause various problems for your health and your plants too!

You can use a humidifier, especially in Winter, when you need increased humidity for you and your plants.

Step 4 – Use Terrariums or Pebble Trays

You often get the advice to use a pebble tray to increase humidity for houseplants. Have you ever think how this is going to be worked?

A pebble tray is when you add pebbles over a tray and add water to it until they cover the pebbles. Then you put the pot of your plant over it so that the pebbles prevent the plant’s root from constantly being close to the water beneath it.

It is thought that the water evaporates from the pebble tray will increase the humidity of the air, which will benefit the plants.

The water that evaporates will spread throughout the whole room or the house by diffusion and hardly increase 2-3% of the overall humidity. This is not just going to be worked for your plants. That’s why the pebble tray does not work correctly.

Now, set up a terrarium by putting some stones or rocks in an aquarium and putting the plants inside it. You will be able to increase the humidity up to 100% without precipitating any water. Because plants naturally exhale CO₂ by transpiration, which increases the humidity.

Cover fully if you want to get a 100% humidity environment but be careful about the growth of microorganisms like fungus. A long time of humidity can cause damages to your plants. Cover it partially or sometimes uncover it for one or two hours to control the moisture.

Step 5 – Place Your Houseplants In The Most Humid Area

When someone asks you, “What is the most humid place inside your home?” What will be your answer? Probably, the bathroom and the kitchen?

Yes, the kitchen and the bathroom are the most naturally humid area of our house. So, if we worry about how to increase humidity in the air for houseplants,  we can easily put them in these areas.

A bathroom with a nice window can be a better place to keep houseplants, which increases the freshness of your bathroom and helps the plants by increasing humidity. Whenever you take e hot shower, the moisture automatically increases, and you don’t have to do any extra stuff to improve it.

Similarly, the kitchen is also a humid place while cooking something. The vapor produces while making food increases the moisture content for that area. Putting some green in your kitchen is not a bad idea, though!

But this way is not always going to be worked because you will only get humidity while using it. The bathroom is only humid while taking a shower and the kitchen while cooking. Even modern kitchens and bathrooms have the facility to pull out the extra humidity from inside.

Step 6 – You Can Simply Give Bath to Your Plants

You can save your time by taking your plants with you while taking a shower! It will give two-in-one-go benefits. Take a shower and give your plants too.

It will help you keep your plants clean from pests hide inside or the foliage to be clean from dust and other things. The soil will also have adequate water by doing this to evaporate afterward, which increases the humidity.

This technique will only help keep your plants clean but not to increase humidity for a long time!

You Can Use Two Pots to Increase Humidity

This method will give you less work than the other methods. You can use two pots; one is a little bit bigger than the other one. The larger one will be the outer, and the smaller one will be the inner pot.

Keep the smaller pot, which will be the pot with plants. Inside the bigger one, in the space between these two pots, put some moss with water to retain the moisture for a long time and evaporate slowly.

This will increase the humidity for a long time. Just be careful to ensure a drainage system, like holes underneath the pots, so that no water will stay and rot your plants’ roots.

Dry Your Clothes in the Same room as Your Plants

Try to keep your plants in a room where you dry your clothes after washing. Ensure that the door is locked; otherwise, the water that evaporates from the clothes will be spread out, and you’ll get just a lower percentage of humidity in the air.

Put a Coverage on Your Plants

There is another way to increase the humidity for houseplants. This is so simple even than making a terrarium!

You can cover your plants either with a glass or plastic bag. CO₂ exhaled from plants by transpiration will naturally increase the moisture, which cannot be spread out of the plastic bag or glass, and the humidity your plants need will remain inside. You can control the humidity by uncovering them after a while.

Buyer’s Guide – How To Get The Perfect Humidifier For Your Plant?

Here are some facts you should concern about while buying a humidifier.

Buy a Filterless Humidifier

Try not to buy a humidifier along with a filter. The humidifier with a filter can ultimately cause microbial growth, such as mold, bacteria. It will smell so bad that you would never want to rebuy a humidifier to increase humidity for houseplants. Also, a filtered humidifier will cost you more than a filterless one.

So, it would be best to buy a filterless humidifier to prevent the growth of bacteria, mold, etc. Moreover, you can check the Everlasting Cool Mist, which can be a good choice.

Buy a Humidifier of The Perfect Size

Humidifier has various sizes and shapes according to the room’s size in which you will keep your plants.

If you buy a desk humidifier and want it for a 300 square feet room, you will not get adequate humidity for your plants, of course.

So, you have to buy a humidifier that suits your house and adequate for your plants. Once again, you can rely on the Everlasting Cool Mist.

Try to Reduce Hassle for Cleaning a Humidifier

There will be lots of humidifiers in the market. Some of them have so many parts inside and, some have less. Go for the less tiny pieces of features inside of a humidifier.

It will help you to clean it easily and quickly. Who will take the hassle to clean? So for the easiest one for your home!

Check the Noise While Buying

Humidifiers are usually placed in an area like, drawing room or bedroom, or it can be anywhere inside your home but outside. Obviously, you do not want any continuous disturbing noise inside your house, right?

What if you are reading a book or studying something or watching a movie or want to sleep in peace, but your humidifier continuously making noise? Can you be in harmony? Of course not.

That is why you should check your humidifier if it makes any noise or not because many of them have such annoying noise. Once again, the Everlasting Cool Mist owns the competition. You can try it.

Also, some humidifier contains light in it which cannot be switched off whenever you want. However, you can prevent this by putting tape over the light.

What Are The Symptoms of Low Humidity on Your Plants?

Houseplants cannot talk, right? But they can show you how they are doing by giving signs.  When they do not get the proper humidity and temperature they need,

• Plants become fade
• Leaves starting to fall out.
• The foliage becomes brittle.
• Brown edges appear
• Plants start wilting
• Flowers fail to bloom.
• Leaves become yellowing or yellow.

When your houseplants present you with the signs mentioned above, you have to be sure about the reason behind their sufferings, the lower humidity of the atmosphere, and you need to know that “how to increase humidity in the air for houseplants.”

Here we tried to acknowledge you with some of the ways you can apply to increase humidity in the air for houseplants.

What Can be The Best Smelling House Plants?

There is another question, what can be the best smelling houseplants? Check the linked article to know more about it.

Typical houses are not so humid to grow plants inside but do not worry if you face such a problem, and always remember that there must be a solution!

Usually, our houses are lower in humidity than the plants should get. Especially in Winter, when the natural moisture gets lower than usual and when the fireplace or heater dry out their air, you have to higher the humidity for your houseplants to grow properly.

If you are interested more to know about the effects of the humidity while the weather is changing, check the linked research paper.

The plants that need a humidity of approximately 80%, which they experience in the tropics, can grow indoors without facing problems.

But whenever it gets lower than 50%, they start suffering due to lack of humidity. That is why you should know how to increase humidity for houseplants. Several ways are there to increase humidity for houseplants; thus, you can grow healthy houseplants indoors! 

We found a resourceful article related to humidity and insomnia. You can check the following article “An Insomniac’s Guide to Dehumidifiers“.

What is Relative Humidity?

When people talk about humidity, they are actually mean humidity, which is related to the temperature. Humidity is closely related to temperature. But how?

Do you know what saturation is?

Saturation is the state when something stays at its highest capacity. For example, the air is 100% saturated with water, which means air cannot absorb more water because it is in its highest degree to uptake more water.

Now, warm air has better saturation skills than cold air. Warm air can uptake more water from the environment and serve more humid air than cold air does.

Even when air humidity will be same, water absorption into the air will vary with the different temperatures. For example, air with 50% moisture and 90F temperature will absorb more water than air with 50% moisture and 70F temperature.

That is why you should be careful while increasing your houseplants’ humidity and maintaining the temperature correctly.

How Does The Humidity of Our Household Increase?

The two primary humid sources of our home humidity are showering and cooking. You can now ask that how these two can increase the moisture content.

When we cook in the kitchen or shower in the bathroom, we often notice some evaporating water floating in the air. These floating waters are the reason to increase the humidity of our home.

When we cook or shower, the air gets warmer. As you know, warm air can absorb water quickly; the evaporating water is readily absorbed by the atmosphere, and the humidity increases.

But they are not too much to increase the adequate humidity we need for our houseplants.

Why Is Humidity Important For Our Houseplants?

Increased humidity can be painful for human beings, but it can be super beneficial for your houseplants.

Most of the popular houseplants are from the tropical region. They generally grow in very high moisture-contained environments, which is not always possible to provide while growing indoors.

Houseplants need around 40-60% of the relative humidity to grow properly. Below or above this range may cause severe problems for houseplants for growing.

If the air gets too dry, the leaves will not get enough water and fall out of the plants. Often the leaves change their color, and so the edges.

Sometimes they turn brown and also pests, insects start to destroy them. Plants also need water for their nutrition which comes from the humidity of the atmosphere.

Read More – Best Insecticide For Indoor Plants

If they lack enough moisture in the air, they will not give you a pleasant display, and your home becomes gloomy instead of refreshing.

That is why you should always maintain the humidity necessary for your plants to grow indoors.

Wrapping Up

So I hope you got the answer about “how to increase humidity for houseplants?”

These were the possible ways of how to increase humidity for houseplants. Human beings are so intelligent that they can discover several other ways to increase humidity in the air.

Hopefully, these ways will help you increase the humidity levels as they are being used for so long for this and relatively easy to do.  Happy gardening!

Last update on 2023-01-28 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API