When it comes to setting up your indoor grow lights, you need to ensure you have the right amount of light for your cannabis light. Too much or too little light can damage your plants. Learn everything you need to know about setting up your grow lights for a fruitful indoor harvest.
Types of Modern Grow Lights
There are three types of artificial grow lights, which are HID, LED, and CFL. Don’t get too focused on the modified light spectrums or new measures of light. Instead, think about light in terms of electricity bills and watts. As a grower, you need to understand how much power consumption a grow light uses, how much light it will emit, and how much heat the lamp will generate.
Growing Space and Lighting
Many first time growers make the mistake of trying to pack as many lamps as physically possible into a growing operation. Keep in mind that the more lamps you have, the more heat it will emit, which is harmful to excessive doses. You want to stick to about 400 to 600W per meter, which is plenty enough for a home growing space. For commercial growers, you may have up to 1000 watts or more to gain maximum yields. For micro growers, opt for 250-watt lamps instead. The advantage of these 250-watt lamps is that your plant tops can go as close as 20 centimeters to a bulb. This limited light output won’t penetrate very far but will reach your plants’ lower branches.
Measuring the Amount of Light Your Grow Room Needs
To find the right amount of light needed for your grow room, you need to multiply the room length by the width to get your growing surface. Then take that number and multiply by your optimal PPFD level. PPFD stands for photosynthetic photon flux density. This measures the exact photons in the specific range of 400-700nm in the visible light spectrum. For example, if your growth is about 250 centimeters long and 80 centimeter wide, your grow space will be approximately 2 meters squared.
How High to Hang Grow Lights
You need to ensure that your LED grows lights hang at the right height to ensure it casts a wide enough net to your entire crop and enough heat to penetrate throughout each plant. Under the right height, you’ll find amazing yields. Since there is so much variety for LED lights, it isn’t a one size fits all formula. However, most manufacturers will provide an ideal height to be hung, but you’ll still need to fine-tune them.
Below are the following general rules of thumb regarding height distance based on a light bulb’s watts. However, you may need to adjust based on the yields you receive.
- 240-400 watts: 41-76 centimeters in height distance
- 450-550 watts: 51-76 centimeters in height distance
- 600-850 watts: 61-66 centimeters in height distance
- 900 watts and over: 66-107 centimeters in height distance
If you’re looking to learn more about the best types of grow lights for your cannabis harvest, Marijuana Seeds Aussie has the best options to choose from.
