To keep your peace lily a fresh and luscious green – with beautiful white flowers – you need to regularly water it. However, make sure not to overwater it. It’s a precious balance! But don’t worry, just read on to find out whether or not it’s time to give it some water.

The short answer to how often to water your peace lily is about once a week to every other week. The long answer is that it depends on several factors. So instead of getting hung up on a specific schedule, the best approach is to check whether your little friend needs water or not regularly.

How To Check Whether Your Peace Lily Needs To Be Watered

If you stick your finger into the potting soil and it is moist all the way to the top, then you don’t need to water your peace lily yet. In fact, you will do more harm than good, as peace lilies don’t like to be overwatered. If – however – the soil is dry to about your knuckles, then you should consider watering your peace lily. During the summer (growing season), you might want to let the soil dry about one-third down, while you can let it dry out longer in the winter, to about halfway down.

Remember, if you wait too long, your peace lily will start to wilt, and you should water it immediately. It is not time to panic though, in the vast majority of cases, your peace lily will completely recover. Just don’t let it wilt regularly on purpose!

When Will My Peace Lily Need To Be Watered Often?

How often peace lilies need to be watered depends on the season, temperature, and amount of light it receives. Obviously, these factors are often related.

In the summertime, when the temperature – inside and outside – tends to be higher and the sun lingers in the sky, your peace lily will grow fast, and you should water it frequently. I bet you will find that it needs to be watered about once per week. However, when it grows more slowly during winter, you can probably get by only watering once every other week.

How To Water Your Peace Lily

When you water your peace lily, you want to make sure that the soil is evenly moist and that you allow excess water to drain completely.

One way to achieve this is to use a pot with drainage holes, place it in the sink, and slowly pour water onto the soil. Stop when water starts to drip from the bottom. When the water no longer drips from the pot, put it back on its saucer. Job well done!

Advanced Techniques – Misting

Peace lilies are tropical plants. Their natural habitat is the rainforest. Most of our homes have less humidity than the rain forest; thus, it tends to be a bit dry for the taste of your peace lily. An easy remedy for this is to supplement your weekly to biweekly watering with misting the leaves and flowers several times per week.

Avoid These Watering Mistakes

The most common mistakes are to overwater or underwater your peace lily.

If you overwater your plant, it will not thrive, and the leaves will slowly turn brown. If you underwater it, it will wilt, and – again – the leaves will turn brown.

Another mistake is to let the roots stay submerged in water. Peace lilies generally don’t tolerate this well, and there is a substantial risk of developing root rot.

Finally, you should use clean, room temperature water. Try to avoid cold or hard water.

The Short Of It

It would be best if you watered your peace lily about once per week when it grows fast. When it is not growing fast, once every other week will do. The best practice is to check whether you need to give your plant water regularly. Do this by checking whether the topsoil in your pot has dried out.