Modern Artificial Plants

Painted Canvas Plants

• You can purchase canvas plants in different varieties including yucca, elephant ear and bromeliad. Plants typically arrive loose so you can custom arrange them. Each leaf has wiring so you can tweak the shape a bit to your liking. A good majority of these canvas impostors are in color- so it's apparent they're not real. Take some white paint, though, and you can solve that. Painting these canvas plants white gives them a sculptural quality, capturing only their shape and texture, so they work well in a contemporary design with simple, elegant lines. You can play with bold accent colors as well.

Faux Grass

• A tiny planter with a bright green tall grass adds some color to your contemporary design. Its tall, blades and shape can soften a room that has plenty of sharp angles and straight lines while maintaining continuity in the modern design. Small grass plants can be placed in various planters and placed throughout the room, or you can use one long planter with a strip of grass on the windowsill or ha hallway console. Look for simple planters in bone porcelain, metal or stone finish.

Faux Flower Box

• Faux plants aren't just for your home interior. Brighten up your window with a box planter of brightly colored faux flowers. Choose flowers that are obviously fake. Unless you can find ultra-realistic plants, flowers that aren't meant to look fake do anyway. Going with faux options like crepe or paper flowers gives the flowers a more artistic, expressive look.

Single-Stemmed Flowers

• If you do decide to go with cheap faux flowers, getting them in white works well. Like the canvas plants, the white gives the flowers a clean, sculptural look, and they can look more natural than the same flower in another hue. Single-stem carnations can be cleaned of all foliage and placed in long, clear vases. They can also be arranged in a tight half-sphere, tied together and placed in a circular vase for a winter "snowball" accent. Faux orchids work well lined up in a window sill in black pots, as do faux tulips.