Easy Ways to Make Your Faux Plants Look Real
/How to Make Fake Plants Look More Lifelike
Are you a proven plant killer? Maybe you’re just afraid to bring live plants into your home for fear of not being able to keep them alive. Perhaps you don’t want the responsibility. Or maybe, like me, you just want MORE plants and need some of them to be as low-key as it gets.
No matter your reasoning, there’s no shame in incorporating fake plants into your decor! BUT, you don’t necessarily want people to realize they’re fake. So in this post, I’ll share an easy DIY and some bonus tips to help make your faux plants look more realistic.
Believe it or not, a year ago, I only had two plants in my house. They were little succulents that I snagged from the park and potted to see if I could actually keep them alive. And they survived!
Since then, I’ve become OBSESSED with adding plants to my home (at this moment, I have 23!). Heck - I even enjoy painting plants! Not to mention my beautiful plants outside.
I didn’t realize how much my decor was missing by not having the splash of color and softness that plants can bring. But, there are simply some areas of my house that aren’t the best for plants to survive, not to mention that it can be a little stressful having loads and loads of plants to care for (“When did I water these ones last?” “Oh crap, did I just overwater them?” “Should this guy be repotted?” “Is this one happy on this shelf?”).
So what do you do when you want to add more plants, but don’t want to risk killing them? You go out and buy some faux plants!
(As an aside, there are countless places to buy faux plants. If you’re looking for a little help deciding where to buy some realistic-looking ones, Apartment Therapy has a couple of articles comparing faux fiddle leaf figs and snake plants from different companies.)
The last time I was at IKEA I picked up this faux fiddle leaf fig for an empty corner in my living room that just needed SOMETHING. It’s definitely not the most realistic-looking plant out there, but what makes it more unrealistic is the hilariously small base. To help up the “real” factor I put it in a basket, but that dinky little base in a giant basket still looked impractical.
So what’s a girl to do but to fill the basket with potting soil? However, instead of filling the whole thing with dirt (which is kind of a waste, not to mention the basket isn’t lined), I only filled it with a tiny bit of dirt but made it look completely full. And whaddyaknow, I have a little tutorial to show you how to “fill” your faux plant’s pot with dirt without actually filling it with dirt. Here’s what you’ll need:
Materials
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- Faux plant
- Basket or pot
- Empty box or other cardboard
- Filler material (I used some paper that came with one of our packages)
- Scissors
- Writing utensil
- Potting mix or dirt
- Black or brown craft paint (not pictured)
- Craft brush (not pictured)
- Tape meausre (optional)
Make A Cardboard Base
The cardboard will serve as the base for your dirt or potting soil to sit on - this may be the most important part of the project - but that doesn’t mean it’s hard!
First thing’s first, you’ll need to figure out the dimensions of the interior of your pot or basket and trace it on a piece of cardboard. You can use your measuring tape to measure the opening, or simply trace the base of your pot.
Then, cut out your circle and cut your circle in half.
Fit your semi-circles in your pot and trim as needed.
Once you have a good fit, trace a circle in the middle of the semi-circles and cut it out. This is where your plant will stick out of the pot, so get some rough measurements of how large this circle should be.
Using black or brown paint, paint the cardboard base. I used black acrylic craft paint, but this could be done with leftover spray paint or house paint too. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you’re just trying to camouflage the cardboard.
Put Everything Together
Now you just have to put everything together!
Start by placing the plant in your pot or basket, then layer in your filler. As mentioned above, I used some leftover paper that was used for packing material with one of our packages, but whatever you have on hand works - newspaper, plastic bags, styrofoam, etc.
Next, place your painted cardboard semi-circles on top of the filler, making sure they’re a little below the lip of the planter.
Then, pour in some dirt! You really just need enough to cover the surface (using as little as you need is kinda the whole point of this project, after all).
Notice how I didn’t even wait for the paint to dry?
And voila! Now your fake plant looks a little less fake!
More Tips to Make Your Faux Plants Look Real
The tutorial above is just one way to help camouflage the fakeness of your plants, but here are 4 more tips you can incorporate as well!
Use a combination of real and fake plants throughout your space, or even in the same pot!
Don’t forget about them. Just because you don’t need to water your fake plants, doesn’t mean you can set them and forget them! Like real plants, fake plants will need a good dusting every once in a while to look their best.
Don’t be afraid to invest. If you’re going to buy a plant you can’t kill, you might as well spend some extra $$ and buy a good quality faux version!
On that note, look for imperfections. Plants aren’t perfect in nature, so why would you want to buy a fake plant that looks too perfect? Some fake plants even come with branches that can be repositioned - take advantage of them!
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, I was hesitant to heed my own advice and invest in my faux fiddle leaf fig - there are some out there that are way more realistic looking than my $45 IKEA version. Now that I’m getting more ideas of where I want to incorporate some faux plants, I’ll put a little more effort into shopping around for a good quality fake next time. On the bright side - one of my friends already touched this one thinking it was real!
