Beginner’s Guide: Grow Lights for Indoor Plants

Indoor growing offers many advantages, more and more people tend to grow fruits or vegetables indoors. However, many beginners ignore the importance of light for plant growth. Plants use light to make their own food through photosynthesis for better growth. For indoor plants, grow lights are specifically designed to replace natural sunlight, allowing plants to photosynthesize and grow well, so it's necessary to add a grow light for seedlings. Here is a practical beginner’s guide of Grow Lights for Indoor Plants to help you quickly pick the right one. Just read on to find out.

How to Choose Grow lights?

Choose warm white light bulbs with high brightness

Actually, the high-brightness bulbs commonly available on the market can be used as a primary small grow light, especially those with a color temperature around 3000 Kelvin, which is relatively beneficial to plant growth. The disadvantage is that these kinds of bulbs do not have a full spectrum, and their functions are not complete compared to professional grow lights. But for those who do not have any experience and find professional grow lighting fixtures too expensive, this will be a great choice, both affordable and quite convenient.

Choose LED grow light bulbs

LED grow light bulbs or fluorescent grow light bulbs? The answer is that LEDs are a better choice. First of all, they are energy efficient. Although LED light bulbs are much more expensive to buy than fluorescent light bulbs, they use only half the power and can last five times as long. What you should know is that plants usually need at least 14 to 18 hours of light a day, so you can save a tons of money by using LEDs. What’s more, They also release less heat, and mercury-free LEDs do not break like glass fluorescent lights, so there are also fewer safety hazards.

Choose grow lights with full-spectrum

When deciding to buy grow lights for your plants, always remember to choose a light with full spectrum. Full-spectrum lights can simulate sunlight to the maximum extent and cover all stages of growth, which is best for indoor growing. However, if your budget is not enough, at least choose grow lights with blue and red light. Blue light can promote plants to produce more chlorophyll, allowing plants to grow better and faster. Red light is essential for flowering varieties. When plants mature and begin to bloom, red light help them prolong the flowering period. It is important to note that if plants use the same light color too much, they may grow a little deformed.

Where Should I Place My Grow Lights?

Grow lights should be close to the plants without any obstacles. It is best to place them above plants to guide the plants to grow upward. Plants will grow well at a right distance from the lights. Generally speaking, the LED grow light should be 12 to 30 inches away from the top of the plant. Then, as the plant grows, adjust your light to stay at a consistent distance from the plant. The distance also depends on the light intensity of the light used. If you are not sure, you can start from further away and gradually bring the light closer to see how the plant grows well.

1000w LED grow light

Light is one of the important factors to promote the healthy growth of plants. So when you decide to grow plants indoors, using grow lights becomes a must. As a beginner, we can start with bright household light bulbs. And for those plants that grow in dark rooms without access to sunlight, we always recommend LED indoor plants grow lights, as they are energy-efficient and safe, with full-spectrum and high light intensity at the same time.

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Beginner’s Guide: Grow Lights for Indoor Plants