LED Grow Lights for Indoor Plants

Most manufacturers rate their LED fixtures at 50, ,000 hours before bulbs have degraded so much that they need to be replaced. Overall, LED bulbs degrade far slower than other types of bulbs. As a comparison, an incandescent bulb will degrade in 6-9 months the same amount that a LED bulb will in years. Ceramic metal halide lights are some of the most exciting to come on the market. Although they sound like an offshoot of the classic metal halides, they actually work quite differently. This is a confusing topic for many growers due to the confusing naming conventions and the sometimes misleading claims of lighting manufacturers.

While it’s possible to build your own setup with individual CFL bulbs, the standard these days is to use a T5 fluorescent tubes in a variety of sizes. T8 and T12 bulbs also exist, but they’re far less efficient and have fallen out of popularity. The further your grow light is away from your plants, the greater the footprint, but the lower the intensity. CFLs are the short twisty bulbs, which are commonly seen in every house. When CFLs are invented, they have replaced the old incandescent light bulbs because of their long life expectancy and efficiency. The blue light, ranging from 400 – 490 nanometers, is used during the vegetative and foliage growth phase.

Modular Stack-n-Grow Light Gardens

Also, LEDs last 50,000 hours , compared to the bulbs in HPS fixtures that need to be replaced yearly. On top of that, our LED lights have a higher light density than most HPS lights, which leads to greater yields and profit per harvest. When you shop for grow lights, it’s important to understand efficacy, which defines a grow light’s ability to convert power into photosynthetic active radiation that can be used by crops. LED growlights produce much more light while using the same amount of energy as traditional grow lights that use high-pressure sodium or ceramic metal halide lamps. The exact cost of running an LED grow light will vary depending on your local utility company, but the average price per kWh in the U.S. is the 13.31 cents. At that average price per kWh and running every day for 12 hours, our FL-1 will cost $419.74 per year ($1.15 per day) and our VL-1 costs $256.51 per year ($0.70 per day) to operate.

A real upside to the Hytekgro lights is that they didn’t heat the space, but a slight downside is that they didn’t come with a timer, so we had to set an alarm and manually turn them on and off. The square shape makes them suitable for hanging over square and rectangular flats of seedlings, and we felt as though the health of the plants improved during their time under the lights. There’s a great deal of information and science to take on board as we understand the way plants interact with different light spectrums. Optimizing yield production and consistent quality of plants we’ve learned are attributed to light spectrums used together – much like natural sunlight. Most LED growing lights offer both types of color spectrum lighting, so you can get all the benefits. Set your grow lights on a timer so your plants get the right amount of light every day.

Space-Saving SunLite® Gardens

A switchable ballast is an HID ballast can be used with either a metal halide or an HPS bulb of equivalent wattage. To change between the lights, only the bulb needs changing and a switch needs to be set to the appropriate setting. Plants grown under HPS lights tend to elongate from the lack of blue/ultraviolet radiation.

• The grow light is also adjustable—we could choose either red light, blue light, or a combination of red and blue.
• Red light is known to be the most effective light spectrum to encourage photosynthesis as it’s highly absorbed by chlorophyll pigments.
• We think it’s true, and not a myth, that grow lights provide the help our seedlings need to root healthy and strong.
• Though they cost a bit more up front, LEDs are super-efficient.

We paired each light with various plants or germinating seeds, and we tested each function on the lights, including timers, dimmers, and temperature monitors. Overall, grow lights are relatively straightforward helpers—they offer added illumination without creating heat. The following grow lights performed well in our tests, although each is designed for a slightly different growing situation. Full-spectrum compact fluorescent lights are a better option.