The One Thing To Be Cautious About When Decorating Houseplants With Christmas Lights
When decorating your home for Christmas, it can be fun and festive to spruce up your houseplants. If you're planning to put string lights on your houseplants, you'll want to use caution. Depending on how long you leave the lights on, it could give your plants more light than they need. Additionally, some string lights will become hot after being turned on for an extended period of time, which can negatively affect the health of your plant or present a fire hazard.
Hanging the lights directly from the stems of your plant could also put too much weight on them, causing them to droop. While it's important to be careful with your Christmas lights, they can be used to decorate your houseplants and make your home feel cozy and festive. As long as you don't leave the lights on all day every day, check to make sure the bulbs aren't getting hot, and take the lights down after the holiday season ends, Christmas lights are a wonderful decoration to enhance your houseplants.
How to decorate houseplants with Christmas lights
Because LED lights don't tend to overheat, it's best to use them for your houseplants rather than other Christmas lights. This will help ensure there's no risk of fire or damage to your plant. Even with LED lights, it's important to regularly check them for issues and turn them off after a few hours. Since LED lights, including string lights, can provide plants with extra light, it's important not to leave them on for extended periods.
If you have a sturdier plant, like a fiddle leaf fig, with a trunk, wrapping the lights around the strongest portion of your plant is a great way to implement this decoration. For other plants, it might be a good idea to place your lights around the pot or lay them on the table or floor around your plant. This will help to ensure the weight of the lights doesn't stress your houseplants.
How plants can be affected by artificial lights
While LED lights may give plants supplemental light when they aren't getting enough, they have the potential to expose your houseplants to an overabundance of light. When plants receive too much light from artificial sources, it could affect their growth, leaving you with plants smaller than they should be.
If the Christmas lights are directly on your plant and touching the leaves, the excess light in these areas could burn the leaves, change their color, or cause them to fall off. It's crucial for your plant's health that you turn off or take down the lights if the leaves of your houseplant turn yellow or curl. When you first put up your Christmas lights, it could be helpful for your plants to only have them on for a little bit at first. This could give your plant more time to adjust to the environmental changes.