Plants may be the single most important element of interior design: when used right, they can add depth, height, and airiness to any room. Here are 8 ingenious ways that plants can make any room look bigger.

Repeat a Theme

In a room with high ceilings, try flanking a window with foliage, (faux or real). The shape and texture of a potted ficus can mimic a wall sculpture and add to the sense of symmetry created by a pair of chairs. The same idea, with a different twist: a potted plant cleverly echoes the theme.

A leafy wall sculpture and a leafy plant work in tandem to focus attention on the view beyond the windows.

Why not wallpaper your walls with vines. Image via Gardenista

Add Height

When chairs go low, plants go high. The effect? Creating an instantly alluring corner where you want to curl up with a book.

Slim Down

A clever trick, in a room with panoramic views, is to choose plants with slender trunks and branches; you can look through them to see past to the garden outdoors.

Point the Way

At the end of a long, narrow hallway, try a pair of potted plants to directs visitors toward the open doorway at the back of the house.  Short of painting an arrow on the wall, the floorplan couldn’t be spelled out more clearly.

Betty Gertz’s vine-covered hallway via Architectural Digest

Fill Negative Space

Put an exuberant fern in an empty space such as a fireplace – it will instantly look like a shadowbox frame for the plant. Plants are great fillers.

Add Colour

Large Fiddle-leaf fig trees can add instant greenery and pattern to an otherwise monochromatic room.

Peek Out

A half-revealed plant can peek out from behind a well, or screen, adding depth and mystery to any space.

Potted trees can add instant greenery and pattern to an otherwise monochromatic room. Image via Remodelisa.

Wallpaper with Vines

In your next renovation, why not specify full-depth masonry planters, indoors complete with integrated irrigation and drainage. You can plant creeping fig as the main vine, with asparagus fern and rex begonia vine as accents. To make sure the vines cling to the walls,  you can apply a temporary adhesive until the vines started to cling on their own.

Gather Your Pots

Group plants on tabletops, benchtops, and commodes. No surface should be off limits to plants: let them spill over the edges of shelves. They are an instant focal point, soften spaces and relax everything.

This is an abbreviated version of a blog post that appeared on US blog Gardenista