What are the best lights for growing plants indoors? 2020 Updated

Unless you have a greenhouse or an unlimited number of south-facing windows, grow lights are your best bet for reliably providing the right light to your plants year-round. Though nothing is better than real sunlight, grow lights allow you to trick plants into believing they’re getting the real thing.

Regular light bulbs for lamps and other light fixtures don’t deliver the full color spectrum needed to support plants in every stage of the growth cycle. And without the right light, a plant can’t photosynthesize or make food to grow. Further, regular light bulbs that emit a lot of heat can potentially cook tender seedlings or burn houseplant leaves.  Samsung LED Grow Lights , on the other hand, always keep cool.

The most basic thing that one needs to know about growing weed is that it requires some basic elements of nature – air, water, heat, and light! While all four of these are available in the outdoor growing setup and exist freely in nature, the problem with growing weed outdoors is that it does not allow the grower to have any control over these factors. Basically, there might be a day where the sun might be behind the clouds – which means that both light and heat are being cut off – and there might be multiple such days. Furthermore, there might be a dry spell for a really long time and water might become scarce!

Hence, it is essential for any good ‘grower’ of weed to grow their cannabis indoors and under controlled environment which would ensure that they can emulate a ‘best-case scenario’ for their plants by providing heat and light with the help of grow lamps and air and water can also be provided in just the right amount!

Grow lights, in particular, are the most important because essentially what they are doing is that they are emulating the natural light and heat that the sun provides to the plants. Plants need light and heat because they use that to create pigments and energy with processes such as photosynthesis. This is what helps them grow stronger and healthier. Furthermore, especially for cannabis plants, grow lights are of another importance – based on the kind of heat and light you provide at different stages you can somewhat alter the chemical composition of the plants getting a stronger or a lighter flavor in the weed that you are going to smoke! Hence, it is essential to know about grow lights and understand their functions.

ECO Farm LM301B UV&IR 220W Quantum Board

Pros

• Full light spectrum with wide coverage


• Safe and powerful


• Ease of installation and use


• Ideal for all stages of growth


• Separate switches for bloom and vegetative stages


• Daisy chain system

Cons

• Expensive

Spider Farmer SF-2000

Pros

• Affordable


• Energy efficient


• Provides full-spectrum light


• Dual chip 10W LEDs


• Two-year warranty


• Long lifespan


• Comes with cooling fans

Cons

• Does not come with waterproof features


• Makes noise


• Not at par with many other lights

Light Spectrum refers to the range of colors present in the light being emitted.  Most LED grow lights are comprised of several different colored LED diodes providing a broad spectrum of colors.  As you may have guessed, some have broader spectrums than others.  So the question is, what spectrum is best?

Science has shown that plants, in general, require more blue light during the vegetative phase and more red light during the flowering phase.  That’s why you see many LEDs on the market emitting a purplish light, combining red and blue LEDs.  However, it’s believed that a broader range of colors, including, the invisible to the naked-eye, UV light (in small quantities) have beneficial effects on plant growth, although most LED lights don’t offer UV light, primarily because UV emitting LEDs are expensive relative to other colors.

As many of us learned in grade school, white light is comprised of a broad spectrum of colors.  So, it might seem logical to use white LEDs to provide the best color range for your plants.  Unfortunately, white LEDs are inefficient light producers as compared to individually colored LEDs, and they provide colors that your plants don’t make use of.

Many so-called “Full Spectrum” lights utilize many white LEDs.  White LEDs are not a bad thing, but too many of them can make for a less efficient grow light.

IR (Infrared) light is also a component of many of the light available today, and it is also considered to be beneficial to plant growth.

Ultimately, most LED full spectrum grow lights on the market will grow your plants, if you have enough of them for the area you’re trying to light.  But, you’re not here to just grow your plants, you’re here to maximize their growth.  The best LED grow lights offer a wide spectrum of colors including UV light.

LED grow lights are growing lights that are made out of the light emitting diodes (LEDs) with varying wavelengths (colors). It has been scientifically proven that LED’s different colors help the plant cultivation in its various stages: from growing to fruition. We are here to see which LED grow lights are the best for growing cannabis.

Whatever your intentions are for buying a LED grow light, you must be aware of a fact that not all LED grow lights are the same and that you must choose a grow light that would satisfy your needs as a grower. Pick a good one and you will have a high time of your life. We have assembled a small list of things to consider before buying the best LED grow light for the money.

• How to choose the best LED grow light: It all depends on your needs and your budget. If it’s a small scale operation, you may be satisfied with the ones that are more affordable and less wasteful. If you are growing for commercial purposes, you need a quality and durable LED grows light used in professional settings for your business venture.


• Different spectrums for different cycles: A full-cycle LED grow lamp is required if you want to grow your plant from seedling to flower. On the other hand, if your plant has already germinated in outdoors conditions, you may only require LED grow lights in the blue and red spectrum for growing and flowering respectively.


• Mind your budget: Just like any other type of product on the market, there are products that are pricey and products that are more affordable. Planning is crucial at this point. A grow light is not the only part of an indoor growing operation: there are also filters, fertilizers, nutrients, soil and many other components that you will need to spend your money on. Plan carefully and find one that fits both your requirements and your budget.


• What do your plants need: Check your plants’ needs. Some plants require full or high light while others need low light. If your plant is sensitive to strong lights it is senseless to waste your money on a LED grow light that would dry out or burn your plants.

Plants have evolved to grow well under light cycles that the Earth provides them outdoors.  Long bright summer days and shorter less bright Fall and Spring Days.  This is why it is best to replicate these light cycles when growing indoors.  The following light cycles are recommended (by growth phase):

• Seedling/Clone Phase: 16+ hours on, 8- hours off


• Vegetative Phase: 18 hours on, 6 hours off


• Flowering Phase: 12 hours on, 12 hours off

A change in the light cycle will actually help trigger the plant to move on to the next growth phase, specifically from Vegetative to Flowering. It’s also important to keep in mind that some plants react poorly to interruptions in their light cycles.  Turning a light on in the middle of a dark phase, perhaps to check on your crops, can be detrimental to overall yield and should be avoided.

It’s important to understand a few more things. First, a light’s outputs are both heat and light when energy is the input. Light is what we want, not heat.  The more heat a light puts out then the less light it is putting out from the same amount of energy input.  This is why traditional forms of lighting (Incandescent, High-Pressure Sodium, etc.) get so hot and are so inefficient.  LEDs save energy because they don’t get as hot.  Pretty simple, right?  However, some LEDs get hotter than others and some emit less useful light colors than others (more on that later).  This makes it very difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison between LED grow lights.  ECO Farm LED grow light  can be your great choice.