Would You Pay Someone $2,000 to Style Your Houseplants?

Plants play many important roles in the home – boosting your mood, refreshing the air and enhancing the look and feel of your space. Still, choosing the right indoor plants can be overwhelming for many people, which is where a new type of designer – plant-specific decor stylists – comes in. But would you (and should you) pay a fee to have an interior plant designer style your houseplants?

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Plant Stylists

What exactly is a plant stylist? Just as you might hire an interior designer to offer their expertise on the best paint colours for your kitchen or how to arrange furniture to transform your living room, an interior plant designer uses their specialized knowledge to select, arrange and sometimes care for the best indoor plants for you and your home.

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Expert Level

Because houseplants present two challenges – how they look and how well they’re suited to survive in a particular location – calling on an expert can eliminate a lot of guesswork and hassle when you want to improve your home with plants.

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Goodbye Bad Ideas

For a fee, a professional plant stylist can also sway you from making avoidable (and expensive) mistakes.

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Light Matters

For example, while you might love the look of a fiddle-leaf fig in your uber-sunny office or bedroom, a plant stylist would know that these temperamental plants aren’t practical in a room with too much light – saving you from disappointment.

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Safety First

And while plants may look benign, certain varieties can pose a risk to pets and kids. The peace lily, for example, is a popular indoor plant choice because of its beautiful look and air-purifying qualities – but it also contains calcium oxalate crystals, which can be mildly toxic when ingested. A plant stylist should have the knowledge to help you avoid potential issues.

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Pesky Pests

An indoor plant stylist will also know which plants tend to attract certain pests in certain areas and can provide plants that suit your willingness for ongoing maintenance.

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Take Care

Beyond choosing plants that will do well in your particular space, some plant stylists can be hired to check in and assist with indoor plant care and maintenance – just as you might work with a landscaping company to help care for your yard and garden.

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Think Outside the Insta Box

Trends

are trendy for a reason – they’re popular and lots of people do the same thing. However, a plant stylist can help you bring a beautiful vision to life that isn’t the same as every other plant-filled room you see online (though, of course, a snap of an exceptionally styled plant-filled space could make your home the new trendsetter).

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Cost Matters

There are clearly plenty of benefits to hiring a plant stylist for your home, but there is one obvious drawback – the cost. While, as with any design professional, the cost of plant styling depends on multiple factors (like the size of the styled space, the scope of the project, the experience of the stylist and more), one Brooklyn-based firm charges a minimum of $2,000 for their services.

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Invest Wisely

While the cost may give sticker shock, there are cost-related factors that can make hiring a stylist for your houseplants seem more attractive. For one, expertise can save money. Not only can a professional ensure you get the best price for plants, you will avoid mistakes that would waste money in quickly-dead plants.

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Consider Convenience

Whether you don’t have access to a vehicle or you live in a busy city, there’s also something to be said for the convenience of having someone deliver a beautiful array of plants and containers straight to your living room.

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The DIY Method

Of course, while all these factors can make a plant stylist worth considering, hiring a designer isn’t always in the budget – but that doesn’t mean that your home has to be devoid of greenery. If it’s not in the budget (or you just want to learn the skills for yourself), you can always take a DIY approach to styling your indoor plants.

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Think Like a Stylist

If you want a plant-filled home and you want to do it yourself, it’s important to wear your plant stylist hat, which means starting with research and planning. Consider factors like light availability, aesthetics, cost and degree of ongoing care required when designing your indoor plant-scape.

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Baby Steps

Without a ton of expertise or the help of a plant stylist, you need to learn to walk before you can run with a room filled top to bottom with modern houseplants. Instead, it’s a good idea to start with just a few potted plants – or perhaps even with one room only – before you invest a lot of time and money. Once you feel confident, you can expand.

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Green Living

Whether you hire a plant stylist or become your own interior plant designer, enjoy the process – having plants in the home is wonderful way to bring nature, life and joy into your space.