Should You Buy Fake or Real Plants For Short Term Rentals?

One of the most important parts of a short term or long-term rental is how it feels for guests and tenants. Normally when you have a good amount of sunlight with high walkability, both tenants and short term guests are relatively happy in any rental. However many hosts and landlords don’t talk about THE PLANTS! Should you buy fake or real plants for your property?

We’ve experimented with both fake and real plants for our short term rental on Airbnb and seen some mixed results. We started with real plants both indoors and outdoors but quickly learned that outdoors was best for real ones. Given we live in Seminole Heights Tampa Florida with tropical weather, buying real plants to withstand the weather was fairly straightforward. But, should you buy fake plants to decorate the inside of your rental?

In short, yes. We’ve received (and even had the plants mentioned) a higher amount of five-star reviews from having fake plants in our units. Boxwoods are really trendy right now and succulants are always a great photo waiting to happen. On top of just making the unit feel more livable fake plants are amazing for covering up electrical panels in a non-permanent way.

This is a shortlist of our favorite fake plants we’ve included in our short term rental property from Amazon.

1. Artificial Succulents set of 3 Realistic with plastic Pots Including Aloe, Echeveria Laui and Haworthia

2. Nearly Natural 5209 6ft. Ficus Silk Tree

3. Nearly Natural 6737 4ft. Bamboo with Decorative Planter

Now once you’ve got the fake plant we’ve found it to be super important to put it in a relatively in-expensive pot. Many of the fake plants come in a pot already but it’s important to give it some character to match your rental’s design. Overall we’ve had great success with gray with gold planter pots from both Amazon, Wayfair and Home Depot but its important to find what works for you. Not that all the pots fake plants come in are cheesy but… many of them are so spend a couple of extra dollars on a new pot.

The design of our first rental property has a grey tone to it and we’ve been using baskets for most storage in the 300 square foot unit. So for our fake plants, we’ve been using both grey pots and woven baskets.

These are a couple of planters we’ve been most excited about (hence the picture of Sarah)

1. White Ceramic Flower Pot with Gold and Grey Detailing

2. Gold and Grey Detailed 8’’ Plant Pot by HOMENOTE

These pots and fake plants will really bring the room together for guests. Plants make a smaller room feel bigger, clean, and comfortable. Never underestimate how either fake or real plants will make guests feel in a rental property.

Let us know what you think about Fake vs real plants on Instagram or YouTube comments.

Love,

Scooch and Steve