No houseplant actually likes darkness. What you're really looking for are plants that tolerate low light without dropping their leaves, and the reliable ones are ferns, fittonia, moss, peperomia, snake plant, ZZ plant and pothos. Closed terrariums also do well in these conditions, because the plants inside them naturally grow on shaded forest floors.
This becomes a real question from September onwards, when daylight indoors drops sharply and plants that managed all summer suddenly start to struggle. Below is how to judge how dark a room really is, what to put in it, and when a living plant is simply the wrong answer.
People tend to overestimate how much light their rooms get. A rough test: if you can comfortably read a book without turning a lamp on at midday, the light is workable for most low-light plants. If you need a lamp, you're in genuinely low light and your options narrow considerably.
Distance from the window matters more than most people expect. Light falls away quickly as you move into a room, so a plant two metres from a window gets a fraction of what one on the sill receives. North-facing rooms and anything shaded by a building or a tree are darker again.
A note on succulents and cacti: they are often recommended as beginner plants, but they need the most light of all. In a dark room they stretch, go pale and eventually rot. Keep them on your brightest sill and put something else in the dim corner.
Closed terrariums are planted with species from shaded, humid places, so bright indirect light is exactly what they want. Direct sun is the real risk, because it turns sealed glass into an oven. That makes them one of the few living options that genuinely prefer the kind of spot most plants dislike, such as a sideboard away from the window or a desk in a north-facing room. They also need very little attention through winter, which helps in the months when nobody feels like a watering routine.
Some spots have almost no daylight at all: internal hallways, windowless bathrooms, a bookcase in a corner. Nothing living will do well there for long, and repeatedly replacing dead plants is neither cheap nor pleasant. Good artificial plants are the sensible choice in those places, and using them frees you up to put the real plants where they'll actually thrive.
If you'd rather have something living in a low-light room, a ready-made terrarium or a DIY terrarium kit is the option most likely to still look well in March. And for terrariums that have got sparse over a dark winter, a refill kit with fresh moss and plants brings them back in an evening.
Match the plant to the light rather than hoping for the best. Ferns, fittonia, moss, peperomia, snake plant and ZZ plant handle dim rooms; succulents and cacti do not. Keep a closed terrarium in bright indirect light and out of the sun, water less than you think, and use artificial plants where nothing living stands a chance.
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