Plants in the Bedroom

To be fair this is not a question we get ask a lot but l was curious to know if it is good for you? So after reading so many blogs and research on Google I think this is going to be one of those personal choices.

Like picking a colour for your favourite bedroom or a duvet cover set, it’s going to be something you either like or dislike. Some of the points that came up was safely, you may be thinking, safety, why is that, is that going to strangle me in the night! No, not really, bedrooms are getting smaller and smaller each year, by this I mean have you been into the average new build home these days? Forget swinging the cat, you can hardly move, so having a plant on the floor is obviously going to cause a trip hazard, believe it or not this is not the main point of people saying having plants in the bedroom is bad for you, so what is I hear you ask? Do plants take in oxygen at night? This is not something I knew before so, plants take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to survive. At night, photosynthesis does not occur hence they take in oxygen and give out carbon dioxide. Therefore, it is said that during the daytime, plants take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen and during the night it is vice-versa. I always thought they breathed in carbon dioxide breathed out oxygen, so this was news to me and probably you too.

Some people think that this bad for your health and will deprive you of clean oxygen whilst you sleep, sounds plausible doesn’t it? So it’s all about Photosynthesis, during the day plants breathe like this: Carbon dioxide + water ➞ glucose + oxygen. This is essential to a plants life, during the night this is reversed, like this: Oxygen + glucose ➞ water + carbon dioxide. So yes, this essentially has truth to it. It's factually correct to say that many houseplants will release carbon dioxide during the night but in realty the amount of carbon dioxide released is minimal. In one breath we take in more oxygen and release more carbon dioxide than a single plant does in a whole night, so this is hardly going to impact your health. In return there is not really going to be many health benefits of the plant cleaning the air in your bedroom during the day either.

For this to really be effective you would need to sleep in a greenhouse at night. The only real benefit I could see from having plants in the bedroom is due to the fact that they look good and will inject some colour and character into a room that you essentially spend the most amount of time in, you may be asleep the majority of that time but just like your favourite duvet cover or cotton sheets they are all there for your pleasure, peace of mind and essential wellbeing.