Things To Look For When Buying LED Grow Lights

In order to pick out the best led grow lights you first have to know the difference between the types that are out there on the market of today. There are many factors that play into picking out the right grow light, all of which are based on electrical efficiency, light spectrum output, light intensity output (lumens) and cost.

What is electrical efficiency?
Electrical efficiency can be defined as how efficient an electrical unit uses its power. This is a useful thing to consider when buying grow lights for a couple of reasons. The first reason that this information is useful is because the grow lights will be drawing power and burning up your power bill. The second reason that this is important is because you want to know of the power being drawn how much is actually being put to good use such as feeding your vegetables. For example a 90 watt LED is a effiecient as a 400 watt grow light that is of the HID type.

What is light spectrum output?
This is very important to any kind of plants growth, determining the where on the light spectrum your grow light shows light from is will determine if you are going to have strong healthy fruits and vegetables or if you are going to have a weak diseased plants. In general just remember blue in the beginning and orange in the end. This will help you to remember which type of light to put on your plants and keep them in the right order.

What are lumens?
Without getting all technical and dorky on you this pretty much tells you how much light you can expect a light bulb or light source to emit. An example of this would be that a candle on a dinner table emits 12 lumens. Just remember the higher the number the better when it comes to flashlights, but not always to how good your plants will grow. Just because you are able to see the light does not mean that it is always good for the plant too.

Ah the almighty dollar.
This is probably the most motivating factor of which type of grow light set up to purchase. Just keep in mind however that sometimes you get what you pay for meaning that you might find a really cheap incandescent grow light but you also might produce some really weak tomatoes from it as well. Just keep this in mind that sometimes paying a little bit more will help you out a whole lot in the long run.

Other Things To Consider When Buying Grow Lights
One of the biggest things that people forget about when buying a grow light set up is the space that they are going to be putting it in. try and make sure that you are taking into consideration of how large the area that you are putting the set up in is.

Are All Grow Lights Created Equal?

By this point in the game you should know that all grow lights are not created equal because of the qualities that we talked about in the earlier post things to look for when buying led grow lights. Now that you know which to look for in a grow light it is now time to go over the different types of grow lights that are out on the market today. The types of lights that we are going to be going over today are fluorescent, metal halide, high pressure sodium, incandescent, and of course the LED grow light. We will be looking at the pros and cons of each light.



Fluorescent Grow Lights- Emit soft white and warm white light tones.
Pros to having these types of grow lights is that they are cheap to buy and inexpensive to run and maintain. The main function of these type of grow lights is to be used for the vegetation stages of growing plants, they are great for the starting phase of growing plants from seeds, for the most part they have a long life span. If you are just starting out, only will be using your indoor setup to grow seedlings to be transported then these grow lights are ideal. Cons- the biggest con of using these types of lights is that they produce less lumens per watt than other types of grow lights such as the HPS grow light. An example of one of the most popular types of fluorescent grow lights is the T5 grow light. The T in the “T5″ portion of the light refers to the type of lamp being used in the light fixture. In this case it is T for tubular. The 5 portion of the “T5″ refers to the diameter of the grow light. The diameter is measured in 8 portions or 8ths, so a T5 grow light is a tubular light that is 5/8th of an inch in diameter. These type of fluorescent grow lights are said to be more energy efficient and produce better than there bigger T12 cousins and other types of normal fluorescents.

T5 Grow Lights For Sale

High Pressure Sodium Grow Lights or HPS Grow Lights – Emit a yellowish orange and red tones.

Pros- using these lights during your times of harvest or reproductive phase will result in large amounts of fruits, vegetables and flowers. These types of grow lights are among the best in the field as they emit high levels of lumens per watt. Cons- They are not the cheapest, and if these are the only ones that you use then you will have tall lanky plants that will crumble under their own weight.

HPS Grow Lights For Sale


Metal Halide Grow Lights or MH Grow Light- Emit blue to green tones in the light spectrum
Pros- these types of lights are the best when they are used to get the plant up and running per say. These grow lights are used to produce strong root and stem plants, they are best used in conjunction with HPS grow lights. These lamps are the number one for most serious high end growers as they are for the most part an all around grow light, except when it comes to the flowering portion of the plants growth. Cons- These are as well not cheap, and are only good used solely if you are growing herbs, non flowering bushes.

Metal Halide Grow Lights For Sale

Incandescent Grow Lights- Emit a lot of red tones and a little blue tones.

Pros- They are not that expensive and can be great beginning lights to use. Use them only if you need to on one or two plants for or for show lights. Cons- The produce a lot of heat in relation to their wattage and lumen qualities.

Incandescent Grow Lights For Sale


LED Grow Lights- Emit blue, green, red, orange, yellow, white, or full range tones of the light spectrum
Pros- yield high quality plants, which produce great fruits, can be put pretty close to the plant in consideration to the other types of grow lights, put off very little heat, last for very long time. Cons- they are expensive to purchase in the beginning.

LED Grow Lights For Sale