What is the difference between a grow light and a regular light? 2021 Updated
When you decide to buy full spectrum LED Grow lights, you are making a decision to not only invest in your indoor grow, but also want to make sure they are the best led grow lights. Over the years, growing lights have proven to be of quite an importance and ever since LED lights have gone popular as a technology, a lot of indoor growers have been switching to these kind of lights!
Why Should You Choose LED Grow Lights?
First and foremost, cultivating plants indoors may require a lot of energy and power consumption. There is a reason plants are called that way: they absorb the energy of the sun and convert it to organic matter. Having a good and strong light source is crucial for a proper and healthy plant development. Just like humans need a certain amount of food to stay healthy and functional, plants need a quality and steady light source that would feed them. You would never survive on 5 grams of food per day, so why should a plant survive on dimmed and inadequate lighting.
That’s where LEDs come in handy as they are far brighter than other light sources. They are pretty much best used as grow lights. Now, if a light source has to be strong in order for plants to grow, wouldn’t that mean that in order to have healthy plants, you lamps should consume more energy. Not necessarily: LEDs are known as champions of efficiency. For example, one LED light consumes less electricity than incandescent and fluorescent lights. They are up to 80 percent more efficient. Of all the energy a LED light consumes, 95 percent goes on the light while only 5 percent goes on heat emissions.That means that your plants are safer, as it is harder for LEDs to burn or dry out your plants compared to incandescent lights. This makes them more environmentally friendly as less electricity is used for the brightness of a lamp. It also makes them the best value deal for the money invested. Being a plant grower and cultivator, you must love nature by default, so you should show it by switching from traditional light sources to LEDs.
What makes the best LED grow lights in 2020?
The best LED grow lights have following common features:
Uniform Spectrum
Major characteristics of a good LED grow light is that it has a uniform spectrum, so all the plants under the light receive same intensity and allow you to grow from seed to harvest with the same light. Best spectrum consists of not just red and blue light, but also infrared (IR) and Ultraviolet (UV).
Power
Best yields for the plants comes out from LED lights which have capacity to give more light your. Hence, the best LED grow lights need to be incredibly powerful.
Efficiency
Efficiency in LED grow lights is a must have need. When operating at a high level and producing high power, maintaining a low cost to run is very important.
Sturdy
LED grow lights are high cost investment and thus needs to last long time to show a positive return on investment. This can only happen if the grow lights are sturdy and reliable .Therefore, the best LED grow lights needs to be reliable and durable, lasting for a long time. All of the lights from below listing are from the most reputable brands and include some sort of warranty. This will ensure your peace of mind , knowing you that purchase are protected.
ECO Farm ECOM 710W Samsung 301H LED Grow Light
Pros
Really bright and offer the best PPFD PAR values
Great heat dissipation
Easy to set up
Works great with auto-flowering plants
Cons
You need to buy extra booster lights in order to get the maximum possible benefit
GrowBright Command Series 660W LED Grow Light
Pros
Easy to set up
Wide range of lights — 12-band full-spectrum LED grow light
3-year warranty
Good heat dissipation
Cons
Some users found it too intense for small setups
Things to consider before buying LED Grow Light in 2020
After talking about characteristics to look in a good LED Grow Light, lets talk about things to consider before buying the best LED Grow light.
1) Coverage Area: It’s absolutely important to be aware of the amount of the space for your light coverage. It’s imperative to understand the total amount of space needed cover with your LED lights. Each light has a range of space that it can cover, hence it’s important to understand the accurate measurement of the grow space to cover. Once the accurate area for coverage by LED grow lights is found out, make sure to read the reviews and feedback from others on the actual space that the LED light can cover.
2) Brand/Budget/Price: These considerations are important depended upon your grow journey. For a beginner, it will make more sense to go with a lower priced option to get your your feet wet. This will be important as the higher-quality lights typically yield the best results. Once you are more experienced, it’s never better to go with the higher-quality lights, as they typically yield the best results. A good brand that has raving customer reviews, is almost always, a safe bet.
3) Spectrum: A full spectrum LED grow light will go a long way in terms of helping your plant during various growth stage. Red,blue, infrared,ultraviolet all light variations are necessary, depending on the stage. It goes unsaid about importance of a powerful light, with different wave lengths to ensure maximum growth. The full spectrum yields are becoming popular these days as they run cool and don’t need any additional fans, cost less overtime given the electrical savings, and a strong durability. We highly recommended to purchase these kind of LED grow light as they are the best lights offer that offer the full range, including UV light.
4) Electrical Usage: A good LED lights will need to have durability and great electrical efficiency as well as they will ideally operating for at least 10–12 hours a day. When researching a good LED light, it’s very important to understand what the total output is (1000w, 400w, 300w etc). The more powerful lights tends to have less electrical usage and more cost effective.
5) Light Control: Every growth stage requires the proper amount of lighting (down to the exact hour). Please find below a breakdown of the phases below for growing LED lights:
- Seedling Phase: 16 hours on, 8 hours off
- Vegetative Phase: 18 hours on, 6 hours off
- Flowering Phase: 12 hours on, 12 hours off
It’s extremely important that light cycles are followed to a tee as it can severely alter the growth and potency of your plants.
Final thoughts
LED lights are useful in helping you succeed in growing marijuana indoors because of the fact that they are basically acting as a replacement to the sun! While this sounds like a rather difficult thing in theory, but in practice, when you consider this, it is actually quite simple. The sun acts as a source of two basic things that your weed plants need to grow: light and heat.
LED lights help make growing marijuana indoors quite easy for you by providing light and heat to your plants. The more concentrated the light is, the higher the heat is — basically, the closer the lights are to your plants, the hotter the heat levels are. Hence, depending on the stage of growth your plants are, you can actually adjust your lights to provide appropriate light and heat for them. For those wondering what the plants do with the light and heat — they generate energy and pigments which help them with their growth.