Aglaonema: lower leaves turning yellow

What it is likely to be on aglaonema

1. Cold damage

   Candidate 1common on this plant

   ·source

   Sourced guidancemoderate confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Houseplants — siting

   Checked 2026-08-13

   Blackened, translucent or limp tissue appearing suddenly after a cold night or a spell beside a draught. Tender plants show it well above freezing — basil blackens around 10 °C — so 'there has been no frost' does not rule it out.

   Points towards it

   • · aglaonema is among the most chill-sensitive of common houseplants and is marked below about 15°C
   • · an indoor siting problem
   • · the leaves nearest the cold surface are affected and the rest are untouched

   Argues against it

   • · nothing changed, and this needs an exposure the plant did not have before
   • · wet compost points at the roots, which affects the whole plant rather than one aspect

   Check this next

   Look for greyish, water-soaked patches within the yellowing rather than a clean fade, and ask where the plant has been. Chill on an aglaonema leaves dull grey-green sunken areas that turn yellow then tan a few days LATER — so a plant that arrived by courier in January, or spent a night in a cold porch, often looks fine on the day and declines the following week.

   What to do now

   Move it into a warm room away from glass, doors and unheated hallways, and keep it above about 15°C. Water sparingly until it recovers, because a chilled root ball in wet compost is what turns a survivable cold night into rot, and remove the marked leaves only once new growth has started.

   ·source

   Sourced guidancemoderate confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Houseplants — siting

   Checked 2026-08-13

2. Overwatering

   Candidate 2very common on this plant

   ·source

   Sourced guidancemoderate confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Aglaonema — cultivation
   • Plant Finder — Missouri Botanical Garden: Aglaonema commutatum

   Checked 2026-08-13

   Not a matter of volume but of frequency: roots need air as well as water, and compost that never dries suffocates them. It kills more houseplants than every pest and disease combined, and its cruellest feature is that the early signs — yellowing, wilting, dropping leaves — look exactly like drought, so the instinct is to water more.

   Points towards it

   • · aglaonema tolerates low light, which means it is often in a dark corner using very little water while being watered as if it were in the sun
   • · the lowest leaves yellow and drop first as the roots fail beneath them
   • · this is a container diagnosis

   Argues against it

   • · the compost is dry, so the roots are not waterlogged — this rules it out entirely.
   • · damage confined to one side of the plant points at a draught or a cold window rather than at the compost

   Check this next

   Lift the pot a week after watering. An aglaonema in a low-light corner uses so little water that the compost can still be saturated seven days on, and a pot that feels heavy with soft yellow lower leaves is the answer — whereas cold damage takes the side facing the draught and often leaves grey water-soaked patches before it yellows.

   What to do now

   Water by weight rather than by calendar: pick the pot up, and only water when it feels light and the top few centimetres are dry. In a dark corner in winter that may be once a month, which feels like neglect and is what this plant wants — and if the lower stem is soft, cut back to firm tissue and reroot the top.

   ·source

   Sourced guidancemoderate confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Houseplants — watering

   Checked 2026-08-13

Narrow it down

This page lists everything at once, which is the right shape for reading and the wrong shape for deciding. The interactive tool asks one question at a time, starting with whichever would separate these causes fastest, and stops as soon as further answers would not help.

Opens with the plant and the symptom already set. Nothing you answer is stored or sent anywhere — the answers live in the address bar and nowhere else.

What this does not cover

These are the causes GrowingHQ holds rules for on aglaonema — not every cause there is. Where several problems look alike, the honest answer is often that they cannot be told apart by eye, and a page that named one would be guessing. If none of the above fits, the general lower leaves turning yellow page lists causes across all plants, and the Aglaonema profile lists the problems it is prone to.