Good Smelling Indoor Plants that Bring Fragrance Into Your Home

Tired of the way your home smells but don’t want artificial fragrances? Fragrant plants are a great solution. In addition to freshening up your air, they add a nice touch of greenery to your decor. Fortunately, there are a lot of fantastic options to choose from. This article will help you find the right plants for your light levels, budget, and gardening abilities.

How Can Plants Make Your House Smell Better?

Adding plants to your home, especially your living room is one of the best ways to make your home smell better, mainly because they filter the air. They absorb carbon dioxide and toxic chemicals and expel pure oxygen, so your house instantly smells fresher.

In addition to getting rid of odors such as smoke smell, plants can also add a pleasant aroma to your home. Smell is a major way plants communicate; they use strong-smelling organic compounds to signal things like “Keep away predators!” Luckily for us, these compounds happen to smell quite nice to humans.

8 Great Smelling House Plants

Mint

Mint is a popular herb to grow indoors. Many people have it in their home to enjoy its aromatic leaves in drinks or as tea, but besides adding a fresh note to your foods and drinks, it effectively deodorizes the house too.

Mint grows into compact shrubs with glossy, oval leaves that have a frilly edge, so it’s ideal for mid-sized planters. Especially if you lightly bruise a leaf, mint’s scent can be strong enough to be noticed from across the room. One of the great things about these fragrant indoor plants is that there are endless variants that all have unique scents.

Things to Know About Mint:

• Pinch off any buds to encourage stronger leaf production
• Provide strong morning sun but avoid the hot afternoon sun
• Water thoroughly twice a week
• Mint does best in humid environments
• Don’t remove more than a third of the leaves at once
• Make sure to provide well-draining soil

Silver Dollar Eucalyptus

If you don’t like fruity or floral smells, this is the houseplant for you. Eucalyptus leaves have a distinctive scent that is sharp, herbal, and slightly citrusy.

In addition to adding a pleasantly earthy scent to your home, this plant looks particularly gorgeous. It has tightly packed, rounded leaves with a distinctive silvery-blue hue. Just keep in mind that this is a fast-growing fragrant plant that turns into a tree eventually.

Things to Know About Silver Dollar Eucalyptus:

• Water weekly with a moderate watering
• Give full to partial shade
• Prune to reduce the size
• Trimmed branches survive in a vase for up to a month
• Plant in cone-shaped pots to make transplantation easier
• Place in more light for a bushy, rounded look

Scented Leaf Geraniums

This class of plants to make your house smell better goes by many names, including ivy geraniums, pelargoniums, or annual geraniums. Whatever you call them, they’re incredibly fragrant houseplants that you can add to your collection.

These scented house plants do have blossoms, but their smell comes from their leaves. The fragrant leaves have fine hairs that expel aromatic oils scented like roses, apples, and chocolate. There are over 200 different varieties that all have distinctive smells and blossoms.

Things to Know About Scented Leaf Geraniums:

• They prefer acidic soil with peat additives
• Full sun provides intense blooms, but they’ll survive in partial shade
• Use smaller pots because these geraniums like being root-bound
• Avoid overwatering and let the soil dry out between waterings
• Though often treated as an annual, it’s possible to overwinter these plants
• Avoid excessive fertilizer use if you want to maximize the scent

Lavender

Lavender produces a mild, floral scent with slightly soapy or medicinal undertones. It’s a favorite for people who want plants in their home that give off a nice, relaxing smell. If you typically unwind on your sofa after a stressful day at work, placing lavender in your living room is a wonderful idea.

What’s more, lavender is also very attractive. It grows in compact clusters with narrow, pale green leaves. This fragrant plant can be grown indoors, ideally near a south-facing window where it can get enough direct sunlight. It regularly blossoms with small, spiky flowers that are typically purple but may be white, pink, or blue.

Things to Know About Lavender:

• Lavender requires six to eight hours of full sun
• The soil must be aerated and well-draining
• Water plants every two to three weeks
• Prune old growth in autumn and spring
• Both leaves and blossoms are fragrant, but flowers smell stronger
• Check soil pH and add amendments to lower acidity

Dracaena

These great smelling house plants have clusters of broad, yellow, and green striped leaves that do a great job of purifying the air. In addition to cleaning the air, the cornstalk dracaena is also quite pleasant-smelling.

Its scientific name is “dracaena fragrans” due to its sweet, slightly lilac-like scent. When it blooms its small, white blossoms, the smell is particularly intense and it quickly invades the whole house; if its aroma becomes too strong, you may cut off the flowers.

Things to Know About Dracaena:

• This plant prefers partial shade
• Excess water or fertilization can make it drop leaves
• Repot every three years to prevent root-bound issues
• Dracaena is a tropical plant that loves humidity
• During winter, reduce watering slightly
• If desired, prune blooms to reduce the plant’s scent

Jasmine

These popular indoor fragrant flowering plants have glossy, dark-green leaves. It grows long vines, so you can train it as a climbing plant to decorate and bring a nice aroma into your home. You can also prune the stems to keep it in a compact bush.

Jasmine mostly smells neutral, so it’s an easy way to clean the air. However, when it blooms with white flowering clusters, it smells deliciously sweet and floral so it not only one of the most fragrant indoor plants, but it is also one of the most decorating ones.

Things to Know About Jasmine:

• Jasmine likes full sun to partial light levels
• If you aren’t pruning it or using it as a hanging plant, be sure to provide a trellis
• The plant produces more blooms when the sun is brighter
• Though it doesn’t bloom year-round, it has blossoms throughout spring, summer, and fall
• This plant likes humidity, so overwatering it is hard
• Provide fertilizer in early spring

Peace Lily

This iconic house plant comes with a lot of perks. Not only does it purify the air and reduce smells that are unpleasant, but it has sculptural white blooms with a pleasant, light yet sweet scent. It makes an excellent plant to bring a nice smell into your living room; place it near a north or east-facing window where it can enjoy the morning sun but will not get all day direct sunlight.

Peace lilies grow to be two or three feet high and have very large, teardrop-shaped leaves. They only bloom twice a year, but each time, the flowers remain on the plant for up to two months.

Things to Know About Peace Lilies:

• Needs bright, indirect light to flower
• Loves consistent humidity and moisture levels
• Droopy leaves indicate whenever you ended to water the plant
• Fertilize twice a year in early spring and later summer
• Keep in a warm spot away from drafts
• Dust the leaves occasionally to allow photosynthesis

Tillandsia

Tillandsia are aromatic indoor plants with narrow, sword-shaped leaves. At the top of the stalk, leaves gradually transition to tightly clustered central blooms. These blossoms tend to be shades of orange, pink, yellow, red, or white, and they smell fantastic.

These fragrant indoor plants are very unique because they don’t require soil. They’re often called “air plants” because they can get nutrients from the air. Variants like Tillandsia crocata and Tillandsia mallemontii are known for their sweet, lightly spicy aroma.

Things to Know About Tillandsia:

• Most tillandsia prefer bright, indirect sunlight
• In higher humidity, tillandsia can withstand greater amounts of sun
• To water, you just have to mist them lightly every few days
• These plants can be fertilized with a liquid plant mist
• Some variants like to soak in water
• Use a glass terrarium to improve humidity levels

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