The Living Urn's New Indoor Funeral Urns are Growing in Popularity
More and more Americans are choosing to be cremated and this trend is expected to continue in the coming years. According to the National Funeral Directors’ Association (NFDA), only 25% of Americans were cremated in 1999, which increased to over half today and is expected to rise to nearly 80% by 2040. This surge in the number of people choosing to be cremated is due to several reasons, including the lower cost of cremation (vs. burial) and that many people are less traditional than they once were.
In line with the growing number of people choosing cremation, there are also many new funeral urn options available. This includes biodegradable urns such as The Living Urn® that grows a living tree memorial, burial urns, and scattering urns. In addition, there are also many new funeral urns that have been recently introduced for the home.
Indoor Funeral Urns
Below we’ve highlighted a few of the more popular new indoor funeral urns.
The Living Urn Indoors / Patio is quickly becoming a popular option for families who love the idea of a tree memorial, but don’t have a special place to plant outdoors. This beautiful planter urn is made from high quality porcelain and comes in three colors - white, blue, and beige. It measures 9” in diameter and about 9” tall and includes a series of chambers inside of the urn (a chamber to hold the plant or bonsai tree, a second chamber for potting soil, and a third to hold cremated ashes).
Many families will plant a bonsai tree or houseplant in this unique indoor or patio urn. The Living Urn offers multiple beautiful bonsai trees which are shipped directly to your home ready-to-plant with the urn. This includes the Ficus Retusa, Willow Leaf Ficus, Braided Money, Hawaiian Umbrella, Windswept Juniper, and the Trained Tiered Juniper – some of the most popular and beautiful easy-to-care for bonsai trees available! The Living Urn also offers houseplants at certain times of the year. Alternatively, many families will simply visit their local nursery, hardware store, or grocery store and pick up a houseplant of choice to plant with the urn. A third option is to place cut flowers in the center of the urn, providing an array of color year-round! The Living Urn Indoors comes with a vase option that fits in the center of the urn where cut flowers and water can be placed. In the next few months, The Living Urn will be introducing a subscription program where cut flowers will be delivered every other week directly to a family’s doorstep and ready to place in the urn!
The Living Urn Indoors / Patio is available for $169 (a bonsai tree or houseplant is extra).
The PlantUrn™ is the newest edition to The Living Urn’s growing line of proprietary indoor urns. This beautiful handcrafted urn was designed by artisan C.C. Boyce and is a true work of art that holds a succulent or other small plant on top of the urn. The urn itself is made from premium rescued California Sycamore and FSC Certified Black Walnut and includes smooth surfaces that express the grains and beauty of the wood.
The PlantUrn™ has two parts - the top half includes a small ceramic pot that holds a succulent or small plant and the bottom half holds the cremated ashes of your loved one. It is secured together by rare earth magnets, which are embedded in each half of the urn. This eliminates the need for hardware and gives the urn a sleek, finished look. Many families use the PlantUrn as a main memorial that holds all of a loved one’s ashes, while others choose to use it as a complement to another memorial and only include a portion of the ashes. Starting at $295, it comes in three sizes – Small (holds about 25% of one set of ashes); Medium (holds about 50% of one set of ashes); and Large (holds about 100% of one set of ashes).
A new addition to The Living Urn’s proprietary urn line, EcoHome™ is a beautiful all-natural urn option to hold your loved one’s ashes. It is made entirely from bamboo, a sustainable resource and one of the strongest building materials on the planet. This sleek urn is rectangular in shape and expresses its vibrant grains and natural beauty. EcoHome™ has a solid wall construction and comes standard with wood locking pins on each side of the urn, securely fixing the lid to the base. In addition, it comes with an all-natural handmade cotton pouch to hold a loved one’s ashes in the urn.
This special urn is available for $169 and measures 10 inches long by about 7 inches wide and 6.25 inches tall. It holds up to one set of a person’s ashes and can serve as an urn for the home, or used as part of an outdoor natural burial.
Even though its name makes people assume it’s only designed for burial, Eco Burial is also a beautiful urn that’s commonly kept in the home. This unique urn is made from bamboo, a sustainable resource, and has a distinct cylinder shape. It comes with a birch locking pin that secures the top to the base and can be a beautiful addition to the décor of a home. It holds up to one set of cremated ashes and, although biodegradable, will only begin to biodegrade if buried and exposed to soil and moisture. Offered at $69, this unique urn is an affordable option for most families.
Additional Indoor Funeral Urns
In addition to the popular indoor options described above, there are also many other indoor urns available. A quick internet search can find funeral urns made from metal, wood, and many other materials and in many different shapes and sizes. In addition, with the growing number of people choosing cremation, it is expected that many new and interesting indoor urns will be introduced in the coming years.