This Is the One Spot You Haven’t Thought of Yet to Hang Your Plants

Greenery is a great way to bring life and warmth to any space, no matter what your design style is. I mean, who doesn’t want to walk into a place that’s full of plants? Whether you like to get your plant babies cozy in some pretty pots, or you’d rather let them hang out in macramé planters, eventually, you might run out of places to put them. Well, Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham discovered a spot that doesn’t involve any renovating to retrofit for plants and takes up zero floor space. Spoiler alert: It’s the couple’s staircase, which just might be the easiest and most underrated area to hang plants in a home (if your home has one).

Molesso and Needham share a 1200-square-foot Colonial Revival-style home in Richmond, Virginia, that’s almost 100 years old. “We visited Richmond after a friend told us how much they’d loved living here, and after one visit, we were in love too,” Molesso says. Molesso and Needham’s design style is bright, bold, and vintage-forward, so after two years of renting, they’ve created a warm, homey space full of vintage finds, “street trash” they upcycled, and hand-painted artwork.

What sold the couple on this home years ago was all the natural light pouring in throughout the house, and they still love that brightness to this day. “We went from four-and-a-half windows to 12 windows AND a backyard,” Molesso says. Naturally, this sunniness created the perfect environment for the couple to nurture their green thumbs with plenty of plants, and that’s just what they did, bringing in green babies both big and small.

While some plants are placed on the floor or set in plant stands, the living room was getting a bit cramped. So the couple had the cool idea to hang one of their plants from the staircase, and it’s such a great decorating move for so many reasons. For one, this idea is super renter-friendly because it doesn’t require putting holes in the walls or a ceiling to hang a plant. Placing a couple of plants at higher vantage points also means there’s less competition for all that precious, nurturing sunlight — not to mention it frees up the floors for walking and the tops of tables for other items (or more plants… if that’s your decorating goal).

The bottom line here is if you have a ton of plants but are running out of ideas on where to put them, take a look around your house! If you have more than one story and a staircase with a railing, this trick just might be be the key to your plant crowding problems.