Keeping houseplants and seeds thriving can be challenging when you can’t provide a reliable source of lighting, especially when sunlight is scarce.

In general, houseplants fall into three categories based on their light needs: low, medium, and high light-loving. In addition to sunlight (direct or diffuse), artificial lighting (LED, fluorescent, HID or others) of varying intensity, spectrum and duration also contributes to the healthy growth of indoor plants.

If you’re not sure how much lighting your houseplants need and where to buy them, follow this guide.

Why use LED lights?

There are many reasons to use LED grow lights.

Please bear with me as I walk you through some of them:

They are environmentally friendly — no environmentally harmful substances such as mercury are used in the production of LED lights

Efficient — they use up to 90% less energy than traditional lamps
Long life — they typically last 35,000 to 50,000 hours
Light Tailored to Your Plant’s Needs — LEDs emit a full spectrum of light. The wavelengths of light are often tailored to remove those wavelengths that plants don’t use (such as greens and yellows).
Faster growth — so your plants grow faster and healthier

Slim 500S Dimmable LED Grow Lights 3500k

Features:

The Optic LED Grow Light is a top of the line LED Fixture that is sure to amaze. This all aluminum fixture is lightweight, sleek, and built to provide maximum passive cooling capabilities for the Optic Double Row LED Strips. It is powered by a “Best in Class” Meanwell Dimmable Driver, giving you many years of reliability and top of the line efficiency. Samsung’s horticulture specific LM301H white LEDs are in the class of “Most Efficient” from Samsung and they go through a special lens treatment to stand up to high humidity environments.

Spider Farmer SE5000 480W Full Spectrum LED Grow Light

Features:

This Spider Farmer LED grow light features a uniquely designed 6 extended LED strips that provide more even canopy coverage, especially on the outer edges of the growing area. With 1680 SAMSUNG LM301B diodes, the SE5000 Led Grow Light consumes 480 watts at 1333 umol/s, achieving an impressive PPE of 2.75 umol/J, covering a high yield full-cycle growth of 4'x4'. The full spectrum (380–410nm, 660–665nm, 730nm, 3200–4200K, 4800–5000K) is ideal for vegetable flowering to suit every stage of the plant cycle. The dimmer knob is ideal for growers to adjust the light intensity for different growth stages. The daisy chain feature allows you to connect up to 30 spider farm grow lights — dimming multiple lights at the same time.

What should be paid attention to in each stage of cultivation?

LED lights can be used throughout the life cycle of a plant. Knowing how to position your plants’ LED light sources at each stage of cultivation is critical to growing healthy plants and producing maximum yields.

Seedling stage. For seedlings, position the LED light 24–36 inches above the tallest branch of the plant’s leaves. Since the seedlings are fragile and vulnerable, placing the lighting source closer may result in stunted growth or discolouration. Switch to 18/6 photoperiod for regular and photoperiod feminized seeds and 24/0 for autoflowering seeds. At this stage, light intensity is best. Also, you can use the dimming option if available.
Plant growth stages. During this stage, plants need more intense light. Hang the LED light closer to the plant, observing a distance of 12–24 inches from the top foliage. Monitor the plants and adjust the height of the lights if necessary to avoid irregular growth or discoloration of the upper leaves.

Flowering period. Position the lighting source 16–36 inches above the plant canopy. Depending on your specific blooming needs, you can raise the LED lights to the desired distance. To get photoperiod plants to bloom, set a 12/12 photoperiod.

Using LEDs is actually quite simple, but following these recommendations for growth cycles is crucial.

Conclusion

The final decision will mostly depend on your budget and available space. Bulbs may be better for a small number of plants, while LEDs are better when you need to grow a large number of plants in a small space. This is because LEDs are smaller and can fit up to 2 or 3 in a grow tent, while light fixtures are relatively large and difficult to fit more than one in most tents. Another thing to keep in mind is cost. If you are purchasing a light bulb unit, the initial cost will be low, but you will find that your electricity bill will increase significantly. Although the initial cost of LEDs can be high, they consume so little energy that you won’t see a big difference at the end of the month.