How to Choose a Grow light

Choosing the perfect grow light is key when you're shopping for your garden. It's all about making sure your plants get the light they need to grow strong and healthy. LED grow lights do the job well.

Their energy-saving light output provides enough light to help your plants grow healthy without relying on sunlight.

What are LED grow lights?

LED grow lights are highly efficient artificial lighting solutions with fewer safety hazards than its counterparts. They emit a full spectrum of light, carefully designed to optimize your plant growth, especially during vegetative stages.

Investing in grow lights is a smart choice because they create the ideal lighting conditions needed for your indoor plants, ensuring they grow healthily and produce bountiful yields.

Unlike traditional fluorescent bulbs that produce less light while generating more heat, LED grow lights are energy-efficient, provide higher intensity, and remain cool while in use.

Why should you choose an LED grow light over natural sunlight?

Choosing an LED grow light is a great idea because it lets you have complete control over the type and amount of light your plants receive, regardless of the weather or outdoor environment. This ensures that your plants can grow throughout the year, even when they are out of season.

Unlike natural sunlight, full spectrum LED grow lights are energy efficient, consuming only half the electricity of average fluorescent bulb.

These lights provide a customizable light spectrum, including crucial blue light, emitted by light emitting diodes.

Additionally, their compact size and various light fixtures make them a suitable fit for your gardening setups.

How to Choose Grow Lights: Advantages and Disadvantages

Grow lights can offer some awesome benefits for the plants in your indoor vegetation space. They provide lighting that allows you grow to grow various vegetables, inside during anytime of the year.

These lights are also super beneficial when natural sunlight is scarce because they help you to control when your plants get light, ultimately helping them to grow more stronger and consistently.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using growth lights

Advantages

Some advantages include:

• Can grow plants and vegetables in any season
• Can control when your plants get light
• Can control how much light your plants get
• Can help grow larger crops

Disadvantages

Some disadvantages include:

• Higher upfront cost than traditional lighting
• Can require more maintenance than traditional agriculture
• Can burn or damage your plants if the light is too strong

What type of grow light is best?

There are various types of grow lights for your indoor garden and many led lights are catered specifically for plant cultivation.

Fluorescent grow lights or average fluorescent bulbs, are options with a light spectrum suitable for basic growth. Fluorescents have moderate lifespans and are the most affordable option.

However, they do not provide the complete light spectrum needed for all stages.

An LED grow light system is highly energy-efficient and can be adjusted to match specific growth stages.

It emits less heat and offers a tailored light for a full spectrum of lighting colors, including red light for flowering. LED bulbs also produce low heat compared to alternatives.

High Pressure Sodium lights

High intensity discharge lights, emit intense light and are beneficial for flowering due to their red light. Metal Halide lights have a balanced spectrum ideal for vegetative growth.

HIDs generate more heat and require proper ventilation. As a result, HIDs have a higher risk of burning your crops if used.

How does a grow light work?

What do they do?

A grow light bulb offers you superior "fire-light" properties, making it an ideal candidate in supporting plants in indoor environments like grow rooms.

These lights not only ensure healthy growth for plants aiming to produce food but also contribute to creating an optimal growing environment, for cultivating and growing plants throughout their lifecycle.

LED grow lights, simulate natural sunlight by providing a full spectrum of light that includes blue and red wavelengths essential for plants' growth.

Unlike traditional light bulbs or glass fluorescent tubes, these LED lights emit specific wavelengths like the blue spectrum for vegetative growth and red spectrum for the flowering stage.

As a result, this contributes to a few factors including:

• High output
• Healthy vegetative growth
• Success in environments with limited or low light

By utilizing advanced LED chip technology, these high output LEDs properly propagate plants, mimicking the effects of natural sunlight while enabling optimal growth conditions.

How does grow light affect agriculture crops?

Which plant families are most compatible with grow lights?

Indoor gardening enthusiasts often delight in growing plants indoors. Some of the most common and compatible vegetables to grow indoors using a grow light include spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, kale and green beans.

The lights will provide your growing spaces with the warmth and radiance that the plants crave allowing them to grow tremendously while providing you with a bountiful harvest, regardless of the time of year.

Choosing Lumen

Depending on the needs of your plants, lumens emitted by a grow light may play a crucial role in nurturing your indoor vegetation by delivering the brightness they need to flourish.

The ideal lumens for a grow light, whether it's a light emitting diode (LED) grow light or a standard light bulb, depend on the specific needs of the plants.

Light output and lumens are crucial for indoor garden's growth as they replicate the sunlight needed for photosynthesis.

Lumen range and your plants compatibility

To be effective, high output LEDs and grow lights not only need to be compatible based on your plant's needs, but also adequate in providing a specific spectrum conducive to growth.

Typically, the number of lumens required for healthy growth varies for each plant. However, the optimal number of lumens for any healthy indoor space garden is 7000 to 7500 lumens per square foot when your plants are flowering.

Additionally, the optimal number of lumens required for the success for your indoor growing space will depend on the type of plants you have and the stage of growth that those plants are in.

There are two major categories of lumen ranges that will better help you to make an estimate of what lumens would be required of the grow lights that you purchase.

Those categories include minimal lighting, and medium lighting.

1. For your plants that require minimum lighting, 2000 lumens per square foot is sufficient for healthy growth.
2. The plants that require medium lighting, 5000 lumens per square foot should be allocated.

If your plants are in the vegetative phase, 2000 to 3000 lumens per square foot is the minimum amount needed. However, in the flowering phase, 5000 to 10,000 lumens are recommended.

We offer a variety of grow lights that can produce adequate lumens for healthy growth. One of the many products from our selection, ETi Lighting GL-22-MV, features 3000 lm (lumens) and a light spectrum suitable for your indoor space for gardening.

As a general guideline of the lumen requirements of the most common plants that can be grown indoors includes:

1. Spinach and Lettuce (leafy veggies): 200 to 400 lumens per square foot during the vegetative stage
2. Tomatoes: 600 to 1000 lumens per square foot during the vegetative stage
3. Carrots: 600 to 1000 lumens per square foot during the vegetative stage
4. Kale: 200 to 400 lumens per square foot during the vegetative
5. Mushrooms: they don't require as much light when compared to the other plants, around 10 to 20 lumens.
6. Green Beans: 200 to 400 lumens per square foot during the vegetative stage

The required lumens for optimal growth can vary depending on the specific plant and growth stage. You should base your purchase on the needs of the plants you are growing.

What Light Spectrums are required for plant growth?

LEDs provide full spectrum light for your plants and increased light intensity. To understand why, we need to go over the light spectrum.

Blue lights ranges from 400 to 500 nanometers (nm). The best color LED light for good plant health and growth is the blue light source found in LEDs. They offer a spectrum of light that supports indoor growing and indoor gardening.

Mercury free LEDs with high output are ideal for providing light to cultivate plants effectively.

They outperform average fluorescent lights in terms of light output.

Red light ranges from 600-700nm and works best during the budding and flowering process. Red light wavelengths are integral to encouraging beneficial vegetative growth and photosynthesis, especially in indoor or greenhouse settings.

However, too many red wavebands can trick your plants into believing they're in shade. This can cause their leaves to elongate upwards seeking more sunlight and it will fail to produce healthy flowers or fruit.

Green light ranges from 500-600 nm. Green light isn't as necessary as blue or red light but does benefit low-level leaves during growth periods. Small amounts of green light can improve growth without abnormal changes to plant health.

It is true that your plants will require a certain amount of light to be successful, however distance is also crucial too. Your plants require a certain range of distance between themselves and the grow lights in order to grow consistently and efficiently.

The distance depends on light generating by your LEDs and its adjusted rate form the plants.

What kind of light fixtures are required?

For indoor cultivation with LED grow lights, you'll need light fixtures that cater to various plant needs. These LEDs are excellent for providing the necessary photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) that plants need.

They emit low heat, which helps maintain a suitable temperature, especially during the flowering stage.

These fixtures are energy-optimized, requiring less electricity compared to fluorescents. This makes them great for growing food or propagating plants, as they won't rack up energy bills.

Additionally, the LED lights come in warm temperature and cool temperature options, allowing you to choose the right spectrum for your plant's specific requirements.

So, whether you are tending to low-light plants or ones that love a bit more intensity, LEDs offer a versatile solution for the success of your plant's growth. Be sure to buy enough fixtures to evenly distribute the light over the entire area.

Is an LED grow light toxic?

An LED grow light is totally safe. They're made to help plants grow efficiently without any harmful compounds. LEDs are not toxic to your plants and environment because they do not contain mercury.

An LED grow light is mercury-free while using half the electricity fluorescents require.

Growing vegetation indoors can be tricky and risky. However, your grow light bulb choices can help you become successful in your process of gardening indoors by providing you with the right supplemental lighting while making your experience affordable and stress free.

Browse our grow light selection and make the most rational decision in your grow light purchase.