Indoor growing offers numerous advantages. The major benefits are the most clear: garden pests can’t catch your plants and you have entire command over the weather conditions.
If you are blessed enough to have a greenhouse in your house, providing enough light to your plants will possibly a barrier (shade-tolerant houseplants excepted). If you would like to grow up vegetables, or some other sun-adoring plants, you must go for grow lights.
The indoor lighting found in many homes does little to maintain photosynthesis. So it is hard to decide the right grow lights.
There are many features to consider when buying a grow light. The main aspects that you will require to consider are your enclosure type & range budget, plant category, and ventilation. LED lights are generally more preferred for indoor gardening. We’ve discussed detailed benefits of LED over HID below.
Benefits of LED Lights over HID Lights for Indoor Gardening
The old HID grow lights for plants can do the job, but they are very ineffective in contrast to the LED indoor grow lights.
- No thermal footprint.
- Eco-friendly LED grow lighting uses no toxic metals.
- Energy savings range from 50%-70% over HID lights.
- LED directional lighting requires no reflectors.
- LED grow lights last 6 times longer
- Less frequent watering.
- Maximum chlorophyll absorption and flower production.
- No cooling required.
When it approaches to growing plants indoor, the light qualities matters a lot. LED grow lights are directional and they distribute light that is inside the range which is easily absorbed by plants, so reflectors are not required and no light is wasted.
But this is just a surface glance of LEDs capabilities compared to HID lights. In turn to fully grab the possibilities you must go into a deeper understanding of what LEDs can and how that affects the development of growing plants and the yields.
Bigger Yields
HPS have been earlier said to result in bigger yields, but these days every highly regarded commercial cannabis grower has started using LEDs. Let’s make a simple comparison – a 600 watt HPS light give up to 300 grams for the area its light covers, which interpret into half a gram for each watt. In contrast, an LED grow light yields up to 1.5 grams per watt while using a reduced amount of electricity to produce the same light.
Longer Life
A standard HID light has a lifetime of about 10,000 hours, which might appear like an extraordinary number but in the extensive jog LEDs are a best choice. A high quality LED grow light can be completely functional from up to 50,000 to almost 100,000 hours. With this statistics in mind it is easy to conclude that LEDs are more useful in the extended run and would require being swapped much less frequently. This means that you won`t have to be anxious about changing the lights for years in the future.
Heat Efficiency
HID lights are infamous for how much warmth they produce. In contrast, LEDs are very efficient when it comes to heat management and can be positioned much nearer to the plants. This put aside the additional costs for a sophisticated and large ventilation system. As expected, bigger panels and more diodes are likely to be warm but still not as hot as HIDs, still touchable with an uncovered hand. LEDs are perfectly engineered and aspect integrated cooling sinks and even fans in the more superior models that avoid any heat up problems.
Easy To Use
LEDs are very intuitive and simple to use, just locate the right place, plug them and you are prepared to start growing. There is no need for any extra setups or drilling, all made very uncomplicated and unproblematic. HID lights typically require a lot of preparation and adjustments in order to be positioned well.
Adjustable Spectrum of the Colours
As we mentioned earlier, the supreme advantage of LED grow lights is the changeable spectrums. Plants take advantage from light in changed spectrums during the different growth steps, so containing all of that in one light is a great benefit. No need to change the bulb itself to get light in a different colour as you would require doing with HIDs.
Energy Saving
LED lights are energy efficient and need to be changed less frequently than HID lights. This results in saved money and efforts. Moreover, HIDs start losing their brightness as time go by and require to be changed even before they are completely done.
