While this vibrant and charming succulent plant can survive in the most unfavorable conditions, growth will flourish in areas of your home with enough sunlight and care provided. However, placing your jade plant in an area with bright sunlight isn’t the only factor to be mindful of. In ancient Chinese culture, jade plants are symbolic and are said to provide positive vibes when placed in certain areas of your home.
The best location for a jade plant in your house is an area that receives bright indirect sunlight throughout the day. The sun rises from the east, so an eastern spot or south-facing windows provide full sun for thriving growth. Feng Shui suggests a jade plant at the entryway invites good fortune.
Whether you believe the jade plant is symbolic depending on the location, or you just want your plant to thrive in the best area of your home, read further. This article will explore the best locations in your home for your jade plant to flourish and bring positive energy into your life.
1. South-Facing Locations
Placing your jade plant near south-facing windows during the summer is an excellent choice because it reduces the risk of direct sun exposure.
Spring and Summer
During the spring and summer, the sun’s position in the sky will be higher than during the cooler seasons. The summer sun rises in the northeast and sets in the northwest direction. The sun travels overhead without beaming direct sun rays through your window.
This time of year is referred to as the growing season for most plants, and your jade is one of them. Your jade plant will thrive during the growing season because of the amount of bright sunlight and the increasing hours of daylight the spring and summer months provide. Jade plants require at least four hours of sunlight but thrive with more.
On the summer solstice, the daylight hours will peak and provide up to 16 hours of sunlight, depending on your location.
Although jade plants love receiving as much sun as possible, they don’t want to be placed in the spotlight, per se. In other words, indirect and bright sunlight will allow them to grow healthy branches with strong leaves. If your jade plant is exposed to direct sunlight for too long, you’ll notice the leaves will begin to sunburn.
Fall and Winter
As the cooler seasons come around, you may need to move your jade plant away from the drafty areas that could compromise your plant’s health.
During the fall and winter months, the sun shifts in the sky. It will rise in the southeast and set in the southwest. And because the sun’s position will be lower in the sky, it may expose your plant to direct sunlight that could burn the leaves.
The number of hours of daylight will also substantially lessen. The shortest day of the year is the day of the winter solstice, and your jade plant will receive under 9 hours of daylight. So, be sure it’s still receiving enough sunlight during shorter days.
Your jade will do great nestled in a corner where it still receives bright light most of the day but is protected. Don’t forget to rotate your plant throughout winter to expose all areas of your jade to sunlight. Rotating is part of the essential care that keeps your plant healthy and prevents stress on your plant from awkward growth.
If you want to learn more about the light needs of jade plants, check out my other article: Can a Jade Plant Live in a Room Without Sunlight?
2. Eastern-Facing Locations
When the sun rises to greet the world, it will shine its rays from the east. Placing your jade plant in a brightly lit area in an eastern-facing location of your home will allow your plant to absorb sunlight throughout the day into the late afternoon. Jade plants enjoy brightly-lit areas and utilize the sun’s energy to produce strong and healthy growth.
The more hours of solar energy your jade can absorb, the more growth it will produce.
As mentioned above, you must pay attention to the sun’s path. Knowing the sun’s course will give you a good indication of where to best place your jade plant to protect it from too much direct sunlight where it’s currently located. It should also shield your jade from cooler temperatures and drafts.
3. Southeastern-Facing Locations
Placing a jade plant in the southeastern direction in your home is also commonly suggested.
This location will provide plenty of sunlight for your jade plant when you place it close to the window. This area of your home should get the morning and most of the afternoon sunlight for your jade plant to absorb. Nestling your plant in the corner next to the window will be an ideal location, so your jade can enjoy the benefits of the sunlight without being directly in the path of the sun’s rays.
Again, as the seasons change into the cooler months, position your jade plant in a location that prevents sunburn and cool drafts while still allowing it to receive bright sunlight.
4. Entryways
In ancient Chinese culture, Feng Shui is a spiritual practice of placing objects in specific places of your living space to create good vibes and balance in your surrounding environment.
Perfecting the positioning of objects surrounding your living space is believed to provide a harmonic experience with positive “chi” energy. On the other hand, cluttered spaces and misplaced objects can create the negative energy of chaos and stress.
Feng Shui: Jade Plant Placement and What it Means
Jade plants are charming, for sure, but they also have a symbolic meaning in Chinese culture. The jade plant is often called the “lucky plant” or “money tree.” This is befitting because these attractive plants symbolize good luck, wealth, and success, according to ancient Chinese belief.
And if your jade plant is put in front of a mirror, it’s said to double the opportunities this lucky plant is said to provide.
Placing your jade plant in certain areas of your home creates a positive flow of energy that may bring good luck and prosperity your way. The following are the locations in your home that are highly suggested to place your jade plant when practicing Feng Shui:
- A southeastern area that is next to the main entrance.
- Next to the door of your in-home office.
- In the dining room.
- In a western location of your home.
Wrong Placements
When you place your jade plant in the wrong location of your home, its negative energy will come your way.
For example, placing your plant in the bathroom is said to send all that positive chi energy down the drain. The space is also more humid, and receives far less light than the rest of the house, so that’s an additional reason why you shouldn’t put your jade plants here. They enjoy lower-humidity areas and plenty of bright and indirect sunlight.
Since jade plants are aligned with higher energy, it’s said to opt out of placing them in your bedroom because the bedroom is a place that should be calming, inviting, and relaxing.
Invite Positivity To Flow Through Your Front Door
Next to the main entrance of your home is said to be the best place to put your jade plant, according to Feng Shui. The belief is that you’re inviting positive energy and opportunities into your life when placing your jade plant in the southeast direction close to the main entrance. This goes for your home, office, and business entrance.
However, on a practical level, drafts from the doorway can significantly affect your jade plant’s health during cooler months. Jade plants are sensitive to cold and drafty air, so placing them directly against windows and next to doors may not be ideal for their health. As mentioned above, when cooler weather comes, consider relocating your jade plant away from drafts of cold air to reduce the risk of harming it.
Feng Shui Your In-Home Office With a Jade Plant
If you have an in-home office, placing a jade plant next to the door of your office is another excellent way to invite fortune and prosperity.
To give some support to the Feng Shui claim, studies have shown that plants in your office will create positive energy, a more soothing environment to work in and boost brain function and creativity. For years studies have been conducted to understand the psychological effects of plants in living and working quarters. Studies confirm that plants stimulate brain functions like creativity and motivation and reduce stress.
With that said, perhaps it would benefit us all to fill our offices with some much-needed greenery!
Wine, Dine, and Enjoy Your Jade’s Positive Vibes
The dining room is another excellent location to put your jade plant. This is also said to be beneficial for welcoming positive chi energy into your space. If your dining area lacks natural window light, you can use a small grow light (more on that below) to enjoy the benefits of your lovely jade plant and the positive chi energy it provides.
Send That Positive Chi Energy To Your Children
Now, if you’re looking to invite creativity and luck for your children, a jade plant is best placed in the west direction, where there is plenty of bright and indirect sunlight.
Safety note: Jade plants are toxic to young children, making them ill with intestinal irritation and diarrhea. This plant is even more harmful to dogs and cats. When choosing a location to place your jade plant, ensure it’s high enough that your children and pets cannot reach it.
5. Properly-Lit Locations
Houses and apartments are constructed and positioned differently. Many homes without an open floor plan can have limited areas of sun exposure depending on the number of windows and the window locations. So, you may have to take a mental note of what place in your home receives the most amount of sunlight throughout the day—not just in the morning.
Jade plants achieve the best growth when exposed to bright and inspect sunlight for most of the day. However, they can survive even in low-lit areas of your home, with at least four hours of daylight. As previously mentioned, jade plants are highly resilient and can adapt to most locations.
However, if they don’t receive light at all, plant growth will not only stop, but the plant will rapidly decline in health from lacking sufficient sunlight. Plants need enough energy to function, just as we do.
Suppose you’re placing your jade plant in a low-lit area without it being rotated. In that case, your jade will begin to grow in a leaning position toward the light and eventually topple over. With the heavy and leaning awkward growth, your jade will be unable to support itself.
Even with a few windows in your home, there should be a location by one of them that allows enough sunlight for your plant to stay healthy and grow. The growth rate of your jade plant depends on a few factors, with sunlight being one of them. So, even if you need to have your jade plant in an area with less than optimal sunlight, you can still adore this beautiful mini tree in your home.
6. Any Location Under Grow Lights
If the inside of your home doesn’t receive enough sunlight, there are still options to create an ideal habitat for your jade plant—like using grow lights!
With grow lights, you can pretty much enjoy your jade plant in any room of your home. And to benefit growing plants indoors, artificial lighting technology has come a long way. Grow lights are designed to provide plants with solar energy they can absorb to create chemical energy (foods) to disburse throughout the plant when and where it’s needed.
Without enough solar energy, the growth rate will slow or stop, and your jade plant will reserve energy to survive the low-lit conditions. Grow lights are a sure way to provide enough sunlight throughout the day. Even when the number of sunlight hours has lessened substantially during the winter months.
Supplementing with grow lights provides all the solar energy your plant needs to complete the essential cycles for remaining healthy and producing new growth.
So, if you want a gorgeous bushy jade plant, consider using a grow light that provides the right color spectrum and intensity.
The Amazing Technology of Grow Lights
The best grow light for succulents is a full spectrum LED grow light. And since your jade is part of the succulent family, a full spectrum LED light will be the best choice. You need full spectrum lighting because it provides all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beneficial to the growth and health of your jade plant.
Quality and Intensity Make a Difference
Between the terminology and science, understanding how grow lights work can be quite overwhelming. The following is a brief breakdown of what to look for in a grow light to get the quality and intensity needed for growing plants indoors:
- PAR: A grow light should emit light that falls within the Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) range of 400 to 700 nanometers to activate the photosynthetic process in plants. So, PAR would indicate the quality of the grow light by evaluating the degree of usable light the grow light produces to activate photosynthesis in plants.
- PPF: Of the usable light (PAR), Photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) measures the amount of usable light emitted from your grow light per second.
- PPFD: Of the usable light (PAR) and usable light per second (PPF), Photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) is the amount that actually reaches your plant. The higher the PPFD, the higher the intensity. It’s important for the usable sunlight to reach your jade plant for the photosynthetic process.
However, it’s said that using a grow light at an intensity level of 800 PPFD or higher can cause photo-bleaching and burn the leaves of your plant.
Space-Saving and Budget-Friendly Options Available
Before you start saying you don’t have room for a grow light, they now make many that are small, like a desk lamp or even lights that stake directly into your flower pots. You don’t have to compromise much or any space at all to make your jade plant happy. Many of these smaller grow light options are easier on the wallet, too.
Even small grow light products now come with automatic timers. This is ideal because they will automatically switch on and off when the timer is programmed for a certain number of hours. Having a grow light with timers makes it easier to ensure your jade plant gets the solar energy it needs to grow happy and healthy.
If you would like to explore your options for giving indoor plants enough light to grow, check out my article: How To Give Indoor Plants Enough Light To Grow
