How To Decorate a Sunroom With Plants (7 Ideas)

Giovanni Valle is a licensed architect and LEED-accredited professional and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). He is the author and managing editor of various digital publications, including BuilderSpace, Your Own Architect, and Interiors Place.

Sunrooms (or Florida rooms) are built specifically to allow the maximum amount of sun inside and are livable glass boxes filled with creature comforts. Plants can add a greater sense of hominess to your sunroom, but like any space inside your home, you’d undoubtedly want it well decorated. But how do you decorate a sunroom with plants?

Here are 7 ideas on how to decorate a sunroom with plants:

Coordinate your plants.
Use plants as accessories.
Carefully consider planters and pots.
Cheat with leafy decor.
Consider what kind of sunroom you have.
Know what plants can survive in your sunroom’s environment.
Consider your sunroom’s style.

Your Florida room is as much a part of your home as any other space there, so it’s essential to scrutinize your decorative possibilities. I’ll go over some fantastic options to deck out your sunroom throughout the rest of this article.

1. Coordinate Your Plants

All shades of green don’t coordinate with each other, nor will they always match with different colors. For instance, you probably wouldn’t try putting lime and navy green together even though they’re both variations of the same color.

The same applies to your decor and the foliage you pick. If you have dark green colored pillows, stick with either that exact shade of leaf (if possible) or one that compliments it.

You should also have a discerning eye when deciding what flowering plants you want. The flowers will essentially serve as ornaments and, as such, should work with the surrounding decor.

Let’s say you’ve got white furniture or accents. Pink flowers will work wonderfully. Red flowers with turquoise, on the other hand, may not look that great.

2. Use Plants As Accessories

One lovely thing about using plants to decorate is that you can put them anywhere. As such, they make gorgeous accessories.

If your solarium has a bookcase, you can stick a few flowers among your literature collection. You can have some succulents jazz up your window sills and place some palms in pots in the corners of the room.

Plants make fantastic centerpieces too. A simple vase with some flowers or a particularly decorative vessel can do wonders for a table.

Hanging plants from the ceilings is a reasonably simple way to add some panache to the room and draws the eyes toward another layer of interest.

3. Carefully Consider Planters and Pots

Here’s a scenario: you’re shopping for pots and spot a cute little windmill-shaped one – the only issue is you want it for your Hawaiian-themed sunroom. Here’s a general rule of thumb: you should stick with planters and pots that allow your plants to grow and go with your decor.

As much as you might want that windmill-shaped pot, it’s probably not going to go great with your Hawaiian sunroom. However, you can still use it for your bedroom if you wish.

On the same token, ceramic planters and pots work wonderfully with traditional, more rustic sunrooms. Hanging planters or ones with colorful geometric designs work well for sunrooms with a Mediterranean vibe.

4. Cheat With Leafy Decor

The problem with using plants as decoration is that they’re living organisms that need tending. Taking care of plants can be a difficult task if you lack a green thumb. There is another way to use plant-themed decor instead for those of you who aren’t great with plants!

I’m not saying don’t use live plants at all, but if an array of foliage isn’t appealing, try leaf-covered chair cushions, perhaps. You can compensate for the lack of actual plants with tropical accents and knick-knacks. All this, combined with a few plants in strategic places (and the outdoors foliage), can do wonders for your sunroom.

5. Consider What Kind of Sunroom You Have

Sunrooms or solariums are rooms whose walls are predominantly made of windows and are accessible from inside houses. There’s usually no connection between a sunroom and a home’s central air and heating systems.

There is more than one variation of a sunroom. All sunrooms are constructed in a way that allows natural light into your house. However, traditional sunrooms, three-season, and four-season rooms do have fundamental differences from each other.

Three-season rooms. Three-season rooms have plenty of windows and can be accessed from your home also. The only difference is that they’re built for use throughout most of the year except for harsh winters.
Four-season rooms. A four-season room is a solarium connected to a house’s heating and cooling so homeowners can use them all through the year.
Screen room or porch. Screened-in rooms and porches replace glass with mesh wire walls. Screened-in rooms do provide you with an abundance of fresh air, but this also means there are certain weather conditions where you can’t use your screened porch.

All solariums have pros and cons. For example, traditional sunrooms are only effective and habitable during sunny, warm weather. Screen porches, meanwhile, aren’t much use in cold, snowy, or incredibly wet weather.

Three-season rooms give you more choices in plant variety, but if you live where the winters are harsh, it’d be in your best interest to choose hardy, year-round foliage.

If you have a four-season sunroom, you’re lucky to have plenty of options to choose from, too. Whenever you desire, you can decide on anything from common house plants to sun-loving succulents.

6. Know What Plants Can Survive in Your Sunroom’s Environment

All plants can’t handle every environment. Some plant life thrives better in hot climates, while others prefer more humid temperatures.

Understanding how to balance these two elements is an integral part of choosing the plants for your sunroom. Sunlight and temperatures decrease drastically during the colder seasons, so it’s essential to factor these changes into your choice as well.

Three- and four-season sunrooms may accommodate more varieties of plants because they come with temperature control options. Say you have a type of flower that grows best in warmer temperatures: a four-season room can be temperature controlled, whereas a typical sunroom cannot.

7. Consider Your Sunroom’s Style

Just because you can fill your sunroom with a swath of greenery doesn’t mean that you should.

A plethora of plants won’t work with every solarium decoration scheme. Meanwhile, a potted jungle wouldn’t be too out of place with a tropical theme, but this might not look so great with a farmhouse-style solarium.

If you have too many plants, you can end up drawing the eye away from the decor. Too much focus ends up on the foliage, and the effort you put into the design may end up lost among the plant life. It’s also advisable that any flowering plants’ coloration coordinates with the room’s color scheme.

Your plants mustn’t clash with your design choices, either. For example, if you’ve settled on a contemporary design, you don’t need many plants.

Contemporary rooms often have open and asymmetrical floor plans combined with bold shapes. Too much foliage may result in a jarring design.

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways to decorate a sunroom with plants. However, it’s more complicated than “shoveling hundreds of succulents and palms everywhere.” You must have a discerning eye for what will look good. When decorating a sunroom with plants:

Consider your sunroom and what kind of plants can live there.
Determine whether a specific number or type of plant will work with your decor.
Match your plants with your sunroom’s theme.
Choose pots and planters that go with your sunroom.
Use plants as accent pieces.
If plants aren’t your thing, compensate with plant decor instead.