Impact Assessment of Houseplants on Atmospheric Relative Humidity in the Residential Buildings of Udaipur, Rajasthan

Flora is the nature’s most precious gift to man. In ancient times, regard and love for flora was so great that this kindred relationship was extended even to houseplants. In this study, relative humidity level in the selected rooms, i.e., drawing rooms and dining rooms of the 10 west facing residential buildings along with the National Highway- 8 in polluted zone, of Udaipur Rajasthan was analyzed. Four varieties of foliage and succulent plants were kept in one, two or four suitable corners with four different habits, viz., Opened and Closed windows and fan in ON and OFF mode. To find out the existing relative humidity level, all the experiments were done without any houseplants on day 1 in selected rooms.  The houseplants were kept on day 2 to judge the impact of houseplants on humidity level and again houseplants were removed on day 3 to know the retention of impact of houseplants. As a result, it was found that foliage plants were more effective than succulents in maintaining the level of relative humidity of the atmosphere.