Faux Plants for a Games Room or Card Corner

A reader sent me photos of her husband's games room in a converted loft: a card table, a dartboard, a big screen for football and three dead peace lilies on the windowsill. The room had one small skylight, the heating was on only when people were using it, and nobody remembered to water anything. She asked whether artificial plants would look fake in a room like that, or whether it was better to have no plants at all.

Games rooms, dens and card corners are almost ideal spaces for artificial plants. They are often dim, used irregularly and full of hard surfaces that benefit from something softer. The trick is choosing plants that suit the room's character rather than fighting it.

Why real plants struggle in games rooms

Most games rooms share a few conditions that are hard on living plants:

Condition	Effect on real plants
Low or no natural light	Leggy growth, yellowing, slow decline
Irregular heating	Cold stress, especially in lofts and garages
Irregular use	Missed watering for days or weeks
Busy surfaces and elbows	Knocked over pots and spilled soil on tables and felt

Artificial plants avoid all of these. They also avoid the one thing nobody wants on a card table or a pool table: soil and water. We have covered similar spaces in basement dens and the light problem, and most of the same logic applies here.

Choosing plants that suit the room

Games rooms tend to have a strong character: dark wood, leather, green felt, brass lamps, sports memorabilia. The plants should feel as if they belong to that world.

Large, bold leaves such as fiddle leaf fig, rubber plant or monstera suit darker, club style rooms.
Trailing plants like pothos or ivy soften shelves full of games, trophies or books.
Tall, upright plants such as snake plants or olive trees fill empty corners without taking floor space from the playing areas.
Deep greens rather than bright lime or variegated leaves, which can look artificial in low light.

The reader's husband wanted the loft to feel like an old members' club. We suggested a tall faux rubber plant in a dark ceramic pot in one corner, a trailing pothos along the top of a bookshelf full of board games and a small snake plant on the windowsill where the peace lilies used to be.

Where to place them

Placement matters as much as the plants themselves. A few rules for games rooms:

Keep plants away from the action. Nothing should be within reach of a pool cue, a dart or a flailing arm during a tense moment in the match.
Frame the screen, do not block it. A tall plant on either side of a television softens the black rectangle without catching reflections.
Use corners and shelves. These spaces are usually wasted in games rooms.
Add one plant near the card table, at a height that does not block the view between players.

A small plant on a side table near the card corner makes the room feel lived in. The friends who gather there on Friday nights, some playing cards, some following the football and one usually checking his weekend pool picks on ankertoto, will hardly notice the plant consciously, but they will feel the difference.

The advice I disagree with: fake plants always look cheap

Some interior designers say artificial plants always look cheap and should be avoided in any room that matters. Better an empty corner than a fake plant.

I disagree, particularly for rooms like this. Poor quality faux plants do look cheap, with glossy plastic leaves, visible seams and unnatural colors. Good quality ones, with matte leaves, realistic variation and proper pots, are very hard to tell apart from real plants, especially in the lower light of a games room. What makes a faux leaf look real explains what to look for. A dead peace lily, on the other hand, always looks bad.

Pots and containers matter more than you think

In a games room, the pot is often what people notice first, especially in low light where leaf detail is harder to see. A good faux plant in a thin plastic nursery pot still looks fake. The same plant in a heavy ceramic, stone or dark wooden container looks settled and deliberate.

For club style rooms, dark glazed ceramics, aged brass and wooden planters in walnut or oak work well. Add a layer of real moss, bark or small stones on top of the base to hide the foam and give the plant weight, which also stops it being knocked over when someone brushes past with a cue. Choose pots slightly heavier than you think you need. A tall plant in a light pot is the one most likely to fall over during a lively evening.

Keeping them looking good

Games rooms can be dusty, and dust is what gives faux plants away. Wipe or gently rinse the leaves every couple of months. Rotate plants near windows occasionally so any fading is even. And if the room is used for smoking or has an open fire, clean them more often.

The reader sent new photos a few weeks later. The loft looked warmer, the windowsill was green again and, as she put it, nobody had to feel guilty about forgetting the watering can. More ideas for specific rooms are in our Rooms section.