How to Hang Plants from the Ceiling (10 Creative Ideas)

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Love plants but can’t find a place to display them? There are solutions and some of them require no drilling making them perfect for renters.

There’s even better news for pet owners because by mastering how to hang plants from the ceiling, you’ll be able to safely display any type of plant in your home without worrying about the safety of your pet. Provided of course, you don’t have them too close to anything that a small animal could use climb up such as ladders, a bookcase, or above a side table.

In small places whether in the home, the office or a garden shed, just one suspended plant with lush foliage can totally transform the indoor space, not to mention improve the air quality if you choose to hang an air purifying plant or a few of them.

10 Creative Ways to Hang Plants from the Ceiling

1 – The Easiest Method

The simplest method for hanging plants indoors is to use a macramé plant hanger and suspend it from the ceiling using a spring toggle hook.

It’s quick and practical for hanging one plant, but if you plan to hang a bunch of plants, it’s probably not the best method because every spring toggle hook needs a hole drilled in the ceiling.

For obvious reasons, if you’re a renter, you don’t want to be drilling multiple holes in the ceilings of a property you do not own, and you certainly don’t want to overload the weight your ceiling can hold, which could lead to irreparable damage.

For a small number of plants, spring toggle hooks can often support a heavy weight load of up to 20 pounds. These are ideal for hanging trailing plants with lush foliage indoors such as the Boston Fern or hanging a spider plant.

2 – Hang Multiple Plants from Your Curtain Pole

For those who are lacking the floor space and already used their windowsills for some plants, you can add a tiered look with another row of plants by suspending a shelf with rope attached to your curtain pole.

For a project like this, as it is using rope suspended from the center of the pole, it’s only going to be suited for a few plants for even weight distribution.

There will be some DIY involved and that’s just pre-cutting holes through a plank of wood to secure three or five small plant pots with even weight distribution.

If you just sit them on a hanging shelf, they’re likely to slide, creating an imbalance causing them to crash to the floor. The solution is to secure them through the wood so they’re held in place, unable to slide.

The only other DIY option is to drill holes in each corner of the shelf to feed rope through. With the rope secured to the wood, tie it to a curtain pole and you’ll have yourself a hanging shelf where your plants will get plenty of light.

You can buy these types of hanging structures on Etsy. If the sizes aren’t what you want, some woodworking skills and basic materials area all you need to build your own to the size you need.

3 – Use a Ceiling Clothes Airer

Ceiling clothes airers, sometimes better known as pulley systems, can often support weights up to 20 pounds. If you’d like to suspend a lot of smaller plants from your ceiling but don’t want the holes, the ceiling clothes hanger will only require two holes to secure it in place.

With most designs having at least 3 bars and extending to 55-inches and sometimes longer, they can give you plenty of space suitable for hanging rows of plants.

Even better is you can lower and raise the airer making it easier to water, prune and care for your indoor plants.

4 – The Superior Tension Rod System

It’s no surprise that renters have been using tension rods for years to suspend plants in small apartments in a way that causes no damage.

Tension rods are typically used for hanging curtains or shower curtains, but for plant supports, they have been used creatively to hang plants in shower rooms and over baths to benefit from the increased humidity.

However, did you know there are entire tension rod systems you can use in any indoor space? Rather than a tension rod used like a curtain pole, you can use these to hang plants right around your room at ceiling height.

Instead of a tension rod running from wall to wall or cupboard to wall, freestanding and adjustable closets use a system of tension rods that join together from floor ceiling and pole to pole to create an open hanging space.

For hanging plants, because they’re supported horizontally and vertically, the closet-style tension rod systems hold more weight. As much as 175 pounds per horizontal bar.

Can you imagine how many plants you could put on display?

5 – Make Your Own Custom Floral Chandelier

Floral chandeliers can look spectacular in marquees, above dining tables and even suspended over a coffee table in a conservatory.

You can buy some made to order, but if you have plenty of flowers in your garden or around your home, you could spend a little creative time putting together your own custom floral chandelier.

All the equipment you need are a floral hoop and wire, floral tape and a wire wreath. For hanging it, fishing line works wonders and you can secure them in place with crimp tubes, which are usually used in beading and jewelry making.

They’re handy for stopping the knots in the fishing line from sliding out and the chandelier collapsing.

Get the how-to for making your own floral chandelier at Proflowers.com

6 – Hang a Flower Garden on a Tray

You know how you get raised bed garden planters? Well, the majority are going to be too heavy to suspend from the ceiling, but, make it lightweight enough and you can.

A neat trick that’s similar to hanging multiple plants on a suspended shelf from a curtain pole is to make a garden bed that’s light enough to be hung. Think of it like a tray.

All you need are four lengths of timber and a sheet of MDF or plywood. The timber is the edging that’ll prevent plant pots from sliding off and the sheet of plywood or MDF is to line the base. If you plan to place large plant pots on it, perhaps add additional wood planks to keep them secured on the tray.

The idea is similar to building a vintage fruit crate with the wood so that the gaps between each length of wood let the foliage of the plants spill through, which will eventually hide the wood behind the foliage.

To get an idea of how the project comes together, take a look at this one by @CleverBloom on Instagram.

7 – DIY Your Own Hanging Garden Bed

In areas where there are long winters and you can’t get out to enjoy the garden, bring it indoors by hanging a garden bed. The vast majority that are pre-built will likely be too heavy so to make them lightweight enough, a little woodwork will be involved.

Depending on the weight of the support your ceiling can handle, you could build an indoor garden bed like this one by Tarah of Grandmashousediy.com.

The idea is similar to above, but rather than using the garden bed as a tray, you’d line the inside of it with a water-proof membrane and use potting soil to grow your own plants in the suspended bed.

8 – Build Your own Macramé Hanger with Tie Lace and Cord

All the way from Sweden is this creative and fun way to hang your plants (use Google Translate for instructions) from the ceiling or in a recessed window bay that uses tie lace and macramé cord to hang lightweight terracotta plant pots.

The idea is to use the cord and lace to build a net that supports the plant pot. From there, you can suspend it from the ceiling.

For smaller and lightweight plants in small pots, you may not even need to anchor these into the ceiling as a strong enough Command hook could have sufficient strength to hold each individual pot.

9 – Suspend a Branch to Hang Plants and Other Décor

Ceiling anchors along with chains or ropes can hang pretty much anything and that includes larger branches. There are certain types of wood bark that’s suitable for air plants, but pretty much any wood can be used.

One of the niceties of bringing the outdoors in using twigs and larger branches is not only can you use a straightforward glue gun to attach a variety of air plants, but you can also suspend smaller items like photo frames and stuff the kids have made just by tying it to the branch.

10 – Make Your Own Botanical Crib Mobile with Succulents

Mobiles are generally hung over a baby’s crib. A range of handmade mobiles are available to buy on Amazon Handmade and Etsy. A botanical crib is similar to what you’d hang in the nursery but with a twist for safety reasons.

Using a wood hoop like this and some strong string cut at different lengths, you can hang small glass terrariums from the hoop. Suspend the hoop from the ceiling and you have yourself a botanical mobile, albeit, not suitable to use as a crib mobile due to the terrariums being glass.

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