Peace Lily Pruning: Tips On How To Prune Peace Lily Plant

White Peace Lily Flower
peace lily prune
(Image credit: Alexandr Malyshev)

Peace lilies are excellent houseplants. They’re easy to care for, they do well in low light, and they’ve been proven by NASA to help purify the air around them. What do you do when the flowers or even the leaves start to dry up and die though? Should peace lilies be pruned? Keep reading to learn more about when and how to prune peace lily plants.

Peace Lily Pruning

Peace lilies are known for their big white bracts, the part we think of as a flower that is actually a modified white leaf surrounding a cluster of tiny flowers on a stalk. After this “flower” has bloomed for a while, it will naturally start to turn green and droop.

This is normal, and it just means the flower is spent. You can clean up the appearance of the plant by deadheading. Peace lilies produce their flowers on stalks that grow up from the base of the plant. Once a stalk has made one flower, it won’t make any more-- after the flower fades, the stalk will eventually brown and die as well. 

Peace lily pruning should be done at the base of the plant. Cut the stalk off as close to the bottom as you can. This will make room for new stalks to emerge. Pruning a peace lily isn’t limited to the flower stalks.

Sometimes leaves yellow and start to shrivel up. This may be due to under watering or too much light, but it can also happen just because of old age. If any of your leaves are turning color or drying out, just cut the offending leaves away at their base.

Always disinfect your shears between each cut to prevent the spread of disease. That’s all there is to pruning peace lilies. Nothing too complicated, and a very good way to keep your plants looking healthy and happy.

Liz Baessler
Senior Editor

The only child of a horticulturist and an English teacher, Liz Baessler was destined to become a gardening editor. She has been with Gardening Know how since 2015, and a Senior Editor since 2020. She holds a BA in English from Brandeis University and an MA in English from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. After years of gardening in containers and community garden plots, she finally has a backyard of her own, which she is systematically filling with vegetables and flowers.