Short answer: no, you don’t need to cut the leaves off your Monstera, however damaged they are. From a purely botanical perspective, a crispy or brown leaf isn’t harming the rest of the plant at all.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. There are two good reasons people choose to cut damaged leaves off anyway, and a few situations where it’s worth doing properly rather than just hacking at random.
Here’s everything you need to know — when to cut, when not to bother, where exactly to cut, and what happens to the plant either way.
Do damaged leaves actually harm your Monstera?
No. A damaged or fully dead leaf does not drain resources from the rest of the plant or hold back new growth.
There’s a photo that does the rounds online of a Monstera growing wild in Florida where roughly 75% of the leaves are burned completely crispy — and the top 25% is lush, huge, and clearly thriving. The dead leaves at the bottom aren’t bothering it in the slightest.
So from the plant’s point of view, you don’t need to do anything. The two real reasons people remove damaged leaves are about your home, not the plant’s health.
When it’s worth cutting a leaf off
Reason 1: Aesthetics
We bring plants into our homes to look good, and a Monstera covered in brown, crispy leaves isn’t doing that job. If it’s bothering you, there’s no harm in removing it.
Reason 2: Pests
This is the more compelling reason. Bugs love a dead leaf — no idea why, but they go for new growth and dead growth and largely ignore everything in between. Dead leaves attract and harbour pests, so removing them is a genuinely useful bit of preventative pest control.
My own rule: I remove totally dead leaves, but I leave the ones with just a bit of crispiness, because the part of the leaf that’s still green can keep photosynthesising.
Should you cut yellow leaves off too?
Leave them until they’re fully yellow.
Plants reabsorb nutrients from leaves as they yellow and die back — a process called senescence. Cutting a yellowing leaf off too early interrupts that process and wastes nutrients the plant could otherwise reclaim. Full guide to yellow leaves on Monstera →
Can you cut healthy leaves off Monstera?
Yes — a healthy Monstera will not care.
One of the most common Monstera complaints is that they get too big. If a leaf is growing somewhere inconvenient — blocking a wall you want access to, or just unbalancing the shape — you can cut it off without harming the plant.
You can even remove a leaf that hasn’t fenestrated yet if you want, though you’ll need to improve light, humidity, and feeding if you want future leaves to come in with proper splits.
- A leaf cutting without a node will not grow into a new plant, though it may root
- Whatever part of the petiole you leave behind will brown off and die back, so cut as close to the stem as you comfortably can
Will the leaf grow back after cutting?
No — Monstera don’t regrow leaves from the same spot.
Monstera typically only have one active growth point, which keeps pushing out new leaves from the newest point on the stem. Once a leaf is fully unfurled, the plant moves on — it won’t grow a replacement in the same place if that leaf later gets damaged. Doing so would waste resources it’s already invested elsewhere.
We like the idea of a lush, bushy Monstera, but that’s not really how they’re built to grow — in the wild they grow up, not out, chasing light through the canopy.
That said, you can sometimes activate multiple growth points by significantly increasing light, humidity, and warmth — essentially giving the plant an abundance of everything it needs.
Where exactly should you cut a Monstera leaf?
Wherever you cut, you’ll get some browning around the cut mark — that’s the plant callousing itself off to stop infection getting in. There are two approaches:
- Cut close to the stem. My preferred method. You’ll barely be able to tell a leaf is missing once it’s callused over.
- Cut around just the brown material. Leaves a slightly odd shape and the new edge will brown off anyway, but it’s an option if you’d rather keep more green tissue in the short term.
One exception: if you want to remove the newest leaf, be careful. Monstera leaves grow out of the petiole of the previous leaf, so cutting the newest one can damage the leaf forming inside it. This won’t stop the plant growing altogether — it just means a longer wait, and the next leaf may end up emerging from a different node instead.
What if you accidentally rip or tear a leaf?
It happens a lot — though ‘accidentally’ is doing some heavy lifting, since the most common culprits are kids snipping leaves out of curiosity and cats treating them as a snack.
You can’t fix a torn leaf, and you don’t need to. From the plant’s perspective, a ripped leaf can still photosynthesise perfectly well. There’s no point spending energy trying to repair something that isn’t actually causing the plant a problem.
If the look bothers you, cut it off — the plant would probably rather keep it, but it won’t be harmed either way. Plenty of us keep Monstera as home decor first and foremost, and if a torn leaf isn’t doing its job aesthetically, that’s a perfectly good reason to remove it.
What if the stem snaps?
You can’t fix a broken stem either — but you can make the most of it.
Propagate the snapped-off piece separately. New growth will come back in on the original stem before long. You could replant the broken piece alongside the original if you’d rather keep them together, but bear in mind Monstera roots get big — you’ll likely need a much larger pot sooner than expected.
Worth investigating why it snapped in the first place. Monstera stems are genuinely tough and don’t snap easily on a healthy plant unless dropped or forced. If you’re noticing wide gaps between nodes (much more than an inch or so), that’s often a sign your Monstera isn’t getting enough light — nodes add both strength and girth to the stem, so a leggy, stretched plant is more prone to snapping.
The bottom line
If you want to cut your Monstera’s leaves off, don’t overthink it. Even done ‘wrong,’ there’s only so much damage a cut can cause. If you’re nervous about cutting close to the stem, cut wherever feels comfortable — the rest of the petiole will brown off naturally and you can usually pick it away with your fingers once it’s dried out.
You could, in theory, cut a Monstera right back to the soil and have it regrow within months. They want to grow, and they want to grow big — if yours isn’t, that’s usually a sign to improve its environment rather than a sign something’s gone wrong with a cut leaf.
