How to Get a Peace Lily to Bloom

Peace Lilies, also known as Spathiphyllum, are ones of the most popular indoor plants, mostly because of their pretty white flowers. One of the most frequent questions I get from gardening enthusiasts regarding Peace lily care is, “How to get a Peace Lily to bloom? I’ve had my plant for X years and it never flowers”.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to properly care for a Peace Lily and see your Peace Lily flower, easily!

I’ve had these large Peace Lilies for 2 years now and they’ve been blooming non-stop. Every 3 to 4 months they put out a new set of white flowers, from 5 to 12 flowers at a time. So, it’s possible, you just need to know some easy tricks that make these pretty Peace Lilies flower!

My Peace Lilies are huge and I don’t think you can actually comprehend the size of these tropical plants until you see them next to me. 🙂 Currently, they have 11 white flowers and it’s the second set of Peace Lily flowers in the last 12 months. I pollinated most of them and am now expecting seeds.

Peace Lily plants, like most other houseplants that bloom, needs to reach a certain level of maturity before it can flower. If you’ve just bought a small plant, you may need to wait between 9 and 15 months before it reaches the level of maturity where it can bloom.

The most important thing is that the more light you provide it with, the faster the plant will develop and reach that flowering level of maturity. Flowering takes a lot of energy from the plant, so it needs a lot of light to bloom. Ideally, get a light meter so you can be certain of how much light it gets. Regardless of its natural flowering season, with enough light, you can get your Peace Lily plant to bloom indoor any time of year.

Once your Peace Lily flowers, be aware that the blossoms don’t stay pure white and pretty forever. They may start to turn brown, green, or yellow, and die after a few weeks. And that’s all normal. Once they reach this point, use pruning shears to cut them off, as I do. My Peace Lily flowers stay perky much longer because I pollinate them, so they need a long time to produce seeds. If you’re interested in pollinating your Peace Lily plant, learn all about it in my blog post How to Pollinate a Peace Lily Plant.

According to the University of Florida, some cultivars flower continuously once they reach a certain level of maturity. Others flower after they reach a certain level of maturity, but only flower during spring, early summer. And some cultivars will flower more than once in the year, as is the case with my peace lily plant. The main precondition for all of these plants to flower is that they are receiving very bright light (over 10,000 lux).

It is not unusual to see a peace lily not blooming, even when it is healthy and receiving good care. One of the most common reasons for peace lily plants not flowering is low light. If a peace lily doesn’t get enough light, it will not flower. This is easy to fix. Provide your peace lily with 10,000 lux (1,000 foot candles) of light and in a few months, it should flower. Not only that but it will grow beautiful green leaves much faster.

No, it’s not hard to get a Peace Lily to bloom. Peace lilies flower when you provide them with sufficient light, water and fertilizer. When provided with proper growing conditions, they will reward you with the best blooms.

To get your Peace Lily plant to flower the trick is — give it more light and you will notice a Peace Lily’s flower! Peace Lilies need light to photosynthesize. In fact, flowering plants need even more light than their non-flowering relatives. Yes, Peace Lilies can survive in incredibly low light levels (even as low as 100 lux (10 foot candles)), but they will just be surviving, not thriving, their growth would be very slow, and they would definitely not be blooming. If you give your peace lilies light over 10,000 lux (1,000 foot candles), they should bloom after several months. These conditions will help your Peace Lily grow and bloom fast.

You can encourage flowering by providing bright indirect light to your Peace Lilies, Peace Lilies will love it!  Bright indirect light is light over 3,000 lux (300 foot candles), but I recommend at least 10,000 lux (1,000 foot candles) for flowering. In nature, Peace Lilies grow under the canopy where they get 20,000 lux (2,000 FC) of indirect light, plus some dappled sun that comes through the canopy. Notice the difference in natural outdoor light and indoor light conditions.

But Peace Lily is still one of the most low-light tolerant plants; smaller-sized varieties can survive in as low as 200 lux (20fc). In those conditions, however, you will not see a Peace Lily flower. More flowers and seed production require a lot of energy, and just like any other plant, peace lilies get that energy from light/the sun.⠀

Providing 2 to 3 hours of early morning direct sunlight will help (direct sunlight provides light between 40,000 lux to over 100,000 lux (4,000 – 10,000 FC)), so 1 hour of direct sun can replace 10 to 20 hours of indirect light, even more). As long as the direct sun is not strong (it’s early morning sun), Peace Lilies shouldn’t burn. It’s best to acclimate your Peace Lily to direct sun gradually. Start with very early morning sun, e.g. from 8 to 9 am, for a week, the gradually increase to 2-3 hours. Have in mind that light intensity also depends on where you’re located (the sun will be stronger in some places than others), and the type of windows in your home – how much sun they’re blocking. Be careful to not let its leaves lean against a window; if the window gets too hot, that can also burn the leaves.

In the past, plants were allowed to mature and bloom naturally. Nowadays, to induce flowering artificially, nurseries treat young peace lily plants with a foliar spray of gibberellic acid. Gibberellic acid is a naturally occurring plant hormone. After treatment with the plant hormone, plants will have open blooms within 9 to 16 weeks, depending on the variety.  By inducing flowering artificially in this way, flowering is not dependent on the time of year, temperature, or plant maturity.

Flower size on plants that are treated with gibberellic acid will generally be smaller than on plants that bloom naturally.

Using gibberellic acid allows growers and garden centers to sell smaller pot sizes in bloom. Since the introduction of gibberellic acid, most commercial growers tend to send out immature plants which are not old enough to flower. This means you might need to wait a few months for the plant to mature enough to be able to produce flowers.

Of course, you can do more to make a peace lily bloom than just light. Very important factors are proper growing conditions and proper plant care. Peace lilies need proper watering, a well-draining soil mix, balanced houseplant fertilizer, proper repotting, warmer temperatures, and humidity. All of these factors need to be good in order for Peace Lilies to bloom.

Once the potting soil is fully dry (use a chopstick to check it) and the plants becomes slightly droopy, they need water. Water the plants, count the days until the plants become droopy again, then water again. Next time water 24 hours before they get droopy.

Use well draining soil, such as Mother Earth, or create your own mix – take a pot and mix 3 parts potting soil, 1 part perlite, 1 part bark.

Fertilize your Peace Lily plant if it’s actively growing new leaves, regardless if it’s spring, early summer or winter. Use a houseplant fertilizer with a good N-P-K ratio, such as the Sill fertilizer. This fertilizer has an excellent N-P-K ratio of 9-3-6. Follow the application frequency on the packaging.

I explained in much more detail how to water peace lilies, what kind of light peace lilies need, how to apply fertilizer and all the other important growing conditions in my blog post on peace lily plant care.

If you get to know your Peace Lily plants really well and respond to their needs timely and properly, these tropical plants can bloom frequently just like mine.

It’s normal for peace lily flowers to turn green. As peace lilies grow and age, a peace lily flower will turn green, before turning yellow, then brown, and eventually dying.

Peace lily flowers can also turn green from too much direct sunlight. If a flower turns green, this doesn’t harm your peace lily. Peace lily will be fine. If you want it to keep the white color longer, you can move it away from direct sunlight.

By the end of this article, you should have sufficient info on how to get Peace Lilies to bloom. Please share on Facebook and share on Twitter this article if you enjoy my gardening and houseplants tips!