Best 700W LED Grow Lights for Houseplants and Seedlings
Thinking about seed starting or growing indoors? Here’s what you need to know about indoor grow lights for starting seeds, gardening inside, or houseplants.
Grow lights help you start part or your entire outdoor garden indoors during cold winter days. Grow lights provide the proper light for rapid plant growth indoors.
Seed Starting or growing vegetables and flowers indoors requires grow lights and choosing the best grow lights is very important for a few reasons.
Firstly, the the type of plant you will be growing. some lights are better for some plants than others some plants need more light while others need less.
Secondly, the cost of the grow lights vary greatly from LED to CFL. LED’s have higher up front cost but consume less energy while the CFL’s cost less and consume more energy than LED.
Thirdly the size of the grow area will also determine the type of grow lights you should get to give you the best result.
Having a cheap grow light is a huge savings in terms of cost. For instance the initial cost of buying an LED grow light might be high but in the long run you save money as a result of Electricity Savings for the long term (led light bulbs consumes far less electricity than other light bulbs).
ECO Farm ECO Z Lite 750W LED Grow Light
Features:
This ECO Farm LED grow light features an 8-bar design for more even and complete canopy coverage. Equipped with high efficiency diodes with extremely low thermal resistance. Grow lights are flicker-free and dim, with a lifespan of 50,000 hours. LED grow lights consume 750 watts at 2069 µmol/s for a satisfactory PPE of 2.8 µmol/J, ideal for 6 x 6 ft. plant areas or 5 x 5 ft. flowering areas. Each full spectrum LED grow light uses a custom made 2100 diodes. The abundance of wavelength types is consistent with the spectral range of plant photosynthesis. It concentrates specific wavelengths of light to illuminate crops evenly, controlling plant height and plant nutrients.
Features:
Kind LED grow light uses top-of-the-line Osram and Phillips diodes to produce targeted full-spectrum light as well as UV and IR to enhance your plants during flowering. The KIND X750 uses the full spectrum white LED diodes used by top LED companies. Kind’s Targeted Full Spectrum is designed for plants to maximize harvest weight and plant quality. Our spectrum is the result of hundreds of thousands of hours of field testing in the Northern California medicinal plant industry. With 750 watts of power and a 4' x 4' footprint, the X750 is powerful enough for commercial growers while still being compact enough for single planting.
RayonLED GLMF-720W FOLDABLE LED Grow Light
Features:
With its impressive expertise in LED technology, this medical-grade device has everything to appeal to hobby and commercial growers. The RayonLed grow light is designed to replace and surpass the results of 1000W HID fixtures. What’s more, the fixture has a dedicated UV-IR strip that can be controlled independently. From spectrum to certification, it’s engineered to compete with the top grow lights on the market. Passively cooled light bars provide full spectrum, broad coverage light for long-term growth. High output 1944 µmols PAR! and an impressive efficacy of 2.7 µmol/s per watt. The unit features UV and far-red light strips to provide the most complete spectrum on the market today! IP65 certification allows lights to function and last in even the wettest grow rooms
How to Choose the Best Grow Light for Your Indoor Garden
Grow lights provide a convenient, economical source of artificial sunshine, so your seedlings, indoor herb gardens, and houseplants can thrive throughout the year.
The lights and all-inclusive kits are easy to use, but there’s a huge variety of lamps to choose from.
From LED strips to fluorescent tubes, each has its own characteristics and strengths. And a basic understanding of their features can help you make a more effective decision when purchasing.
Let’s dig into the details a bit.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
The sun emits all the frequencies found within the electromagnetic spectrum, including those of visible light — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.
Blue — Blue is the first color absorbed by plants and is essential at the beginning, or vegetative, stage.
Purple — Purple also helps in the vegetative stage, although purple by itself does not provide effective energy for photosynthesis.
Green — Green is primarily reflected, but small amounts are retained and contribute to energy conversion.
Yellow — Yellow is the least effective for the purpose of photosynthesis.
Red — Red is needed in the mature, flowering stage for blooms to form and is most effective when combined with blue. Red alone should not be used in the early, vegetative stages.
White — White is the combination of all colors in the visible light spectrum and can be used effectively for all stages of a plant’s development.
So, for seedlings and leafy green vegetables, higher spectrum bulbs in the blue range are required.
But if you want plants to flower and set fruit, you’ll also need low spectrum red colors.
Or, you can make things easy. Use a full spectrum, white bulb to satisfy all stages of cultivation.
The Kelvin Scale
The Kelvin scale ranges from 1,000–10,000 and indicates a color’s temperature — the higher the Kelvin value, the closer a lamp’s color is to natural sunshine. Degrees of Kelvin are indicated by the capital letter K.
Ratings below 3500K typically have a warm value, showing an amber tint, while those with a higher rating get closer to a pure, or cool white color.
For leafy vegetative growth, a rating around 6500K is the ideal. But to generate flowers and fruit, plants require a period of exposure to warmer hues at approximately 3000K.
Lumens vs. Watts
It used to be that a bulb’s brightness was indicated by wattage. For example, a 100-watt bulb gave one and a half times the luminosity of a 40-watt bulb.
But due to the advent of energy efficient bulbs, wattage is no longer a good indicator of brightness. Wattage simply shows the amount of power drawn to produce a lamp’s brightness — which is now commonly indicated by lumens instead.
For example, an energy-efficient LED of 1,600 lumens has the equivalent brightness of one 100-watt bulb — but it only consumes up to 22 watts of power. And a comparably bright CFL bulb will use around 26 watts.
Basically, the higher the lumen value, the brighter the light will be. For seedlings, approximately 2,000 lumens per square foot is adequate. Flowering crops can require as much as 10,000 lumens per square foot.
Conclusion
Grow lights give you the advantage of growing a variety of crops in any climate at any time of year. You also benefit from faster growth and improved plant quality.
But to determine the right indoor LED grow light for your plants, you must consider several of the factors above. Thanks for reading!
