Bring Colorful Greenery Indoors With This Epic Living Coffee Table

The rise in popularity of biophilic interior décor (i.e., plant-focused design) has led to more interiors filled with lush plants from wall to wall. This means everything from just an abundance of plants of all sizes to entire walls covered in greenery, real or faux. While plants have always been a popular element when decorating the top of coffee tables, a new trend has taken this to another level: the all-natural terrarium coffee table. This design hack — a living coffee table –  allows you to add a bit more luscious greenery to your home in a very interesting way.

TikToker @maryelizabethart8 recently shared her DIY, where she turned a secondhand table with a glass top into a beautiful living piece of furniture with only a set of planting bins placed underneath. As with @maryelizabethhart8's living coffee table, most designs feature a variety of succulents, which are ideal plants since they're easy to keep alive with less maintenance and less sun exposure. They're also small enough to grow more horizontally than vertically, which makes them perfect for a small confined space — like a coffee table. If your table is deeper and placed in a more light-friendly spot, however, you can also incorporate other small plants.

Glass-topped tables of various designs are perfect for creating your own DIY terrarium table, though some retailers do sell ready-made tables that are designed for the specific purpose of building terrariums. You can also turn pretty much any glass coffee table with supports or a shelf underneath into a planting table. Plastic or acrylic plant basins, meanwhile, are easy to purchase at home and garden stores and come in a multitude of sizes, so they're adaptable to the size and shape of your table. Many also, most importantly, sport trays for drainage.

For glass tables with a shelf, simply slide the full planter bins underneath. This makes them easy to pull out for watering the plants when needed. Fill the bins with materials like soil, moss, mulch, gravel, charcoal, and pebbles to provide a planting surface for your plants and even more visual interest for your biophilic décor.

Note that @maryelizabethart8's design above is actually self-watering. As she shared in the comments, the water in her living coffee table wicks up through the soil, with the help of a tube attached to the side and nylon rope.