You dedicate so much time to keeping your home clean, but you could be missing a spot — your air. Unfortunately, that can sometimes be one of the dirtiest parts of your home; in fact, our indoor air can be five times more polluted than outside, which can affect allergies, asthma, eczema, sleep quality, and can cause more serious health problems.
How do you make sure the air in your home is safe and healthy? It’s much easier than you think! The key to having healthy air is to look out for the factors that affect your indoor air quality: specifically, your air’s levels of chemicals, dust, humidity, carbon dioxide, and temperature.
You most likely don’t have enough time to be constantly making sure your air is clean. Luckily, there is something in your home that would be more than happy to do that for you: plants!
While all plants do a great job at creating oxygen for us to breathe, some go the extra mile and clean our air by either eliminating extra carbon dioxide, regulating our levels of humidity, and even absorbing chemicals from our air.
Don’t have a green thumb? Don’t worry--most of these plants are so easy to care for, you’d have to actively try to kill them. To help you get started, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite air cleaning plants for each room of your house.
Skill level: Intermediate
Loves to clean: Chemicals, including Ammonia, Benzene, and Formaldehyde.
Place Garden Mums near your windows so they can have bright, indirect sunlight.
Skill level: Easy
Loves to clean: Ammonia, Benzene, Formaldehyde, and Trichloroethylene, Acetone
Peace Lillies love both bright and low light--place them anywhere in your living room to freshen up the air for your guests.
Skill level: Intermediate
Love to clean: Absorbs extra carbon dioxide, Ttrichloroethylene, Benzene
Gerbera Daisies release oxygen throughout the night, so they'll look beautiful on your night stand.
Skill Level: Very Easy
Loves to clean: Benzene, Formaldehyde, Trichloroethylene, and Xylene
Snake Plants also release oxygen throughout the night.
Skill level: Intermediate
Loves to clean: Absorbs Formaldehyde and can add humidity to your environment.
Use a Boston Fern to naturally add humidity to your bedroom, if needed.
Skill level: Easy
Loves to clean: Chemicals (including Formaldehyde) and carbon monoxide buildup
Spider Plants love bright, indirect light, and will be perfect hanging in your kitchen absorbing excess carbon monoxide.
Skill Level: Easy
Loves to clean: Chemicals, including Formaldehyde.
An aloe vera plant will thrive in your sunny kitchen window.
Skill Level: Easy
Loves to clean: Mold spores in your air
Ficuses love humidity, so they'll happily keep your bathroom mold-free.
If you aren't sure which plants to buy from this list, a good place to start is by knowing what's really in the air in your home. Indoor air quality monitors like Awair can help you get started. Awair tracks toxins and chemicals in your air and gives you personalized recommendations to help you stay safe and healthy.
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