New app allows home owners to find the perfect plants for their space

App allows consumers to design their homes with just the right number of air and soul-cleansing plants.

We have seen the trend of using augmented reality to aid consumers’ purchases, and now a new app is using the technology to educate people on how to improve their air quality and general wellbeing. An Australian-based company recently released  Plant Life Balance, which allows users to envision how their room would look containing different combinations and arrangements of plants.

The virtual greening app is the first of its kind, and enables consumers to find out the rating of their room based on the species, size and number of plants they have. Using the app, consumers first rate their space and then may add plants from one of the seven professionally-styled looks to improve their score. The app uses scientific research from RMIT University and the University of Melbourne to provide this information, with the team behind the app developing a plant life index through reviewing over one hundred scientific articles. This index is compiled from research into the ways in which plants can improve people’s lives, namely via two key metrics, air quality and wellbeing. For example, just one medium size plant can improve air quality by 25 percent, whilst five plants can lead to 60 percent better mental wellbeing. In creating the index, the team considered the capacity of different plants to absorb volatile organic compounds and other particular matter, such as dust, pollen, soot and smoke, in addition to investigating the ways in which plants can improve productivity and social behavior. The app takes this information into account, and, depending on the size of the room, helps users to maximize their space by carefully selecting the best selection of correctly sized and positioned plants. Users superimpose images of over 90 plants available via the app’s database onto a photo of their room, and the app then rates this and helps them improve the room’s rating. Once the plants have been selected, the app produces a shopping list for one of their accredited nurseries, from which users may purchase their plants and create their green space. Plant Life Balance is available to download for free from the App Store and Google Play.

This app fits into the trend of helping consumers to better their living spaces and routines. Another recent example is Phabit, which helps users to develop healthier habits linked to their plant watering schedule. It is also becoming increasingly popular to provide consumers with ways to improve their air quality, such as the Swedish invention of a scarf which purifies air . How else could technology be harnessed to help consumers to improve their health and living spaces? Are there other situations in which plants could be used to improve air quality and mental states?