• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Grow Light Info

Helping You Choose the Right Grow Light

  • Grow Light Reviews
    • Blurple LEDs
      • Advanced Platinum Series Review
      • BestVA DC Series Review
      • Higrow LED Review
      • King Plus 1000 Review
      • Viparspectra PAR Series Review
      • Viparspectra Reflector 600 Review
    • COB LEDs
      • Aglex COB LED Review
      • CREE CXB3590 COB Review
      • Phlizon COB Series Review
    • Quantum LEDs
      • HLG Quantum Board Review
      • Kingbrite Review
      • Mars TS & SP Series Review
      • Maxsisun PB Series Review
      • Meijiu Review
      • Spider Farmer SF Review
    • Fluorescent Lights
      • Hydrofarm AgroBrite T5 Review
  • Buying Guides
    • HID Guides
      • Best CHM Grow Lights
      • Best HID Grow Light Kits
      • Best HPS Brands
      • Best MH and HPS Bulbs
    • LED Guides
      • Best LED Grow Lights
      • Best COB LED Grow Lights
      • Best Full Spectrum LEDs
      • Best 2000w LED Lights
      • Best Dimmable LEDs
      • Best T5 LED Lights
      • Best LEDs For Flowering
      • Best 300w LED Lights
      • Best LEDs Under $100
      • Best UFO LEDs
      • Best Blue LEDs
      • Best LED Grow Light Strips
    • Other Guides
      • Best Large Grow Tents
      • Best Small Grow Tents
      • Best Fan For Grow Tents
      • Best Grow Light Stands
      • Best Small Grow Lights
      • Best T5 Bulbs For Veg
      • Best Trichome Microscope
      • Best Digital Weed Scale
      • Best Weed Trimming Scissors
      • Best Grow Light Timer
  • Grow Light Advice
  • Cannabis Cultivation
    • Best Place To Buy Marijuana Seeds
    • Best Way To Grow Weed Indoors
    • What Do I Need To Grow Weed?
    • Growing Tips & Advice
You are here: Home / Grow Light Advice

Types Of Grow Lights For Indoor Plants (Which Is Best For You?)

Last updated February 4, 2022 By Steven 1 Comment

Types Of Grow Lights For Indoor PlantsIt’s a great time to grow plants indoors.

It doesn’t matter if you’re growing cannabis, tomatoes or anything else.

That’s because we now have far more options than ever before when it comes to types of grow lights for indoor plants.

And the prices have never been lower either.

But so much choice does have its disadvantages. It makes it harder to know which lighting option is best for you.

This article will help. Keep reading to learn about the different types of plant lights available, their advantages and disadvantages, and for which type of grower each is best.

Contents

  • 1 Types Of Grow Lights For Indoor Plants
    • 1.1 Incandescent Grow Lights
      • 1.1.1 Advantages
      • 1.1.2 Disadvantages
      • 1.1.3 Best For
    • 1.2 LED Grow Lights
      • 1.2.1 Advantages
      • 1.2.2 Disadvantages
      • 1.2.3 Best For
    • 1.3 HID Grow Lights
      • 1.3.1 HID Light Varieties
      • 1.3.2 Advantages
      • 1.3.3 Disadvantages
      • 1.3.4 Best For
    • 1.4 Fluorescent Lights
      • 1.4.1 Advantages
      • 1.4.2 Disadvantages
      • 1.4.3 Best For
  • 2 Types Of Grow Lights: Final Thoughts

 

Types Of Grow Lights For Indoor Plants

We will not cover every single type of grow light here, since there are far too many obscure types that are hard to find and few people use anyway. The ones below are by far the most common.

 

Incandescent Grow Lights

incandescent bulb over indoor garden

Incandescent lights are the traditional light bulbs you have seen for years. It is the oldest lighting technology (apart from fire) and the least energy efficient.

Incandescent bulbs have a filament inside that is surrounded by a vacuum sealed glass bulb. When the filament is excited by electricity it burns and creates light.

The light produced by incandescent bulbs creates heat, and care is needed to keep the bulbs a safe distance from your plants to avoid burning the leaves, especially in the delicate early stages of growth.

Advantages

  • This type of bulb is extremely inexpensive and widely available
  • The fixtures needed to house incandescent bulbs are also widely available and inexpensive
  • The most common fixtures you will see are clip on floodlight type fixtures, floor standing lamps, and standard table lamp style fixtures

Disadvantages

  • Incandescent fixtures are not energy efficient compared to the other, more modern light fixtures available
  • They take more electricity and tend to burn out faster, especially if you are using them for many hours per day
  • They generate a great deal of heat, and when you have many of them in a room, that room can get extremely hot and cause you to need a cooling system just because of the heat they produce

Best For

Growers on a tight budget will find incandescent fixtures a good option. However, the spectrum of light they produce is a poor reproduction of the sun’s natural spectrum.

It is best to use them in tandem with natural light, or other fixtures. They can also come in handy in the early stage of cannabis when you are germinating seeds and need to keep the temperature up to entice the seeds to sprout.

Finally, they are a good choice if you are growing weed on a window sill. Plants on a window sill get natural light for much of the day, so they just need a bit of a supplement.

Any situation where heating a plant is needed, incandescent bulbs are a good choice. But watch your distance, because they get extremely hot to the touch and will burn your fingers and your plants if they get too close.

 

LED Grow Lights

led grow lights over indoor lettuce plants

LED is an acronym for light emitting diode. These types of lights are a fairly new technology and are versatile and extremely useful in grow rooms.

The way they function is by moving electricity through a diode which produces light, using electroluminescence.

They produce extraordinarily little to no heat, and because the light is produced by a diode, the color of the light can be tailored for different uses.

Advantages

  • They do not require nearly as much electricity as incandescent light, making them energy efficient
  • The technology allows for a single fixture to produce the full color spectrum of the sun’s natural light
  • Of course, no light is as good as the sun, but certain LED lights are made to mimic the sun’s spectrum of light and they do a good job of it
  • These lights produce much less heat, so you can place them close to plants and when you have many of them in a room, the ambient temperature is not going to go up as much
  • The fixtures themselves do not need to be exceptionally large, so they have an advantage over other types when you need to get them in a tight place

Disadvantages

  • LED lights do not always have the same output as bigger, more robust lights. Many of the cheaper brands on the market tend to produce less light overall, so you may need more of them to do the job that a single fixture of another type could do.
  • Many cheaper fixtures have a blueish tint. Plants love blue light, but they need far more red during flowering (around a 5 to 1 ratio).
  • Because you can get close to the light without getting hot, some growers experience a phenomenon called light burn, which cause yours leaves to turn yellow even though there is no heat damage.
  • These fixtures tend to be more expensive.

Best For

LED lights are a smart choice for small growers and hobby growers with a small space and a handful of plants.

The low heat emission and wide spectrum light they produce will provide excellent light for their plants while not running up the power bill or turning the place into a sauna.

They can also be useful for large commercial grow rooms where power consumption is high, and using LED saves a lot on power and cooling costs. Not to mention bulb changes.

Plants love LED lights, but if you decide to use them be careful to wear protective glasses when in your grow room, and do not look directly at the fixtures to avoid harm to your eyes.

 

HID Grow Lights

HID grow lights for indoor garden

HID lights are the big guns. The fixtures tend to be large, and the output can be massive. For some perspective, stadium lights are HID lights. Parking lot lights, streetlights and stage lights are all usually of the HID variety, too.

These lights can output lots of light per fixture, but not all HID fixtures are massive light emitting fixtures. There are some that are smaller and well suited for indoor grow rooms.

The way they function is quite interesting. There are two electrodes inside a vacuum sealed bulb which is filled with plasma or a sort of gas.

These lights are known for lasting a long time and putting out a lot of light. But they will not work by themselves, if you plug them into a random socket.

They require a device called a ballast, which is needed to amplify the initial electricity to start the light. Turning on the light initially requires a high amount of power.

HID Light Varieties

The are several different varieties of HID lighting. The most common are:

High Pressure Sodium

HPS bulbs are a version of HID light bulbs (or lamps as they are called in the industry). HPS lamps produce a more orange or red light and tend to be the HID light of choice when it comes to the flowering stage of cannabis.

Metal Halide Lamps

Metal halide lamps are a type of HID bulb that cast a blueish light. These lamps are excellent for producing growth in cannabis during the veg stage, but they are not great for the flowering stage.

Ceramic Metal Halide

Despite the similar name, these are very different from regular metal halide. They have a much more complete color spectrum that is very close to natural sunlight.

They also use less power and emit less heat. CMH lamps are the best form of HID lighting, if you are using a single light for all stages of plant growth. They are great lights for veg and bloom.

Advantages

  • HID fixtures are energy efficient and produce a high output of light per fixture. These traits make them great long term investments for serious growers.
  • This type of light still seems to be the most popular with mid-size to large commercial growers (though this is changing in favor of LED). If the big guys are using these, you know they produce good enough results for you if you are a hobby grower.

Disadvantages

  • HID fixtures and lamps are expensive, but generally cheaper than LEDs.
  • They require a ballast which costs more money. Most fixtures that are made exclusively for HID lamps already have a ballast, which is one of the main reasons they are so expensive.
  • HID lights produce a lot of heat. Typically, growers will have tall ceilings with the HID lights close to the ceiling and far away from their crops. This does not make them less hot, but it does lower the temperature close to the plants.
  • You need a lot of space to operate several HID fixtures due to the heat and size of them.
  • You’ll need to replace your bulbs every 2-3 grows on average, which adds to the cost (especially for a large operation). These bulbs deteriorate over time.

Best For

Commercial growers who have large facilities. These lights need space, and if you are in a cramped room, they will be to hot and too bright.

If you are a smaller grower, these are still a great option if you have the budget for them and enough room to fit them into your setup.

 

Fluorescent Lights

fluorescent grow light bulb

Fluorescent lights recall the long tube style lights you see attached to ceilings in garages, mechanic shops, and other commercial spaces. However, they are no longer just these large tubular fixtures.

There are compact fluorescent lights as well that will fit into a regular incandescent fixture socket. Both types work well for plants.

These lights are popular with home gardeners because they are not too expensive and do not emit as much heat as incandescent or HID fixtures. They produce a fair amount of light per fixture and are pretty efficient, though not as efficient as HID or LED.

The way they function is by igniting a mercury vapor gas trapped inside a vacuum sealed container. The excited gas produces a bright light that interacts with the phosphor layer on the inside of the glass container. This is the powdery stuff you see when you find a smashed fluorescent light.

Advantages

  • They are not awfully expensive and are widely available. Some of the newer, more deluxe fixtures cost more, but the traditional troffer style tube fixtures can be had for cheap.
  • They are easy to place and set up because many of them are simple ceiling mount fixtures that require only 2 screws to attach them to a ceiling stud.
  • These lights excel at early growth stages.
  • They do not get nearly as hot as incandescent or HID lamps.

Disadvantages

  • Fluorescent lights do not have the ideal spectrum of light for the flowering or late veg stage; they will work, but not nearly as well as HID or LED (full spectrum white LED) lights.
  • They do not produce as much light per watt of power as HID or LED, making them less energy efficient (but still far more efficient than incandescent).

Best For

Home growers who need cheap lights that do not produce too much heat. They are also great for early growth stages since they usually have a blue-heavy spectrum and will not burn the delicate plants.

If you have a small area with several plants in the early stages of growth, fluorescent lights are a great choice because they will not hurt the babies, and you will not be heating up the nursery with massive hot lights.

 

Types Of Grow Lights: Final Thoughts

We generally recommend LED grow lights for almost everyone these days. Fluorescent lights can make sense for smaller grows of plants that do not flower, or for dedicated seeding, cloning or vegging spaces.

HID lights no longer have any real advantages over LED. The one exception is CMH. These bulbs rival a good LED fixture in terms of efficiency and spectrum, but LED (quality fixtures, of course) is still better. CMH does generally cost a bit less, though.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mark says

    December 18, 2021 at 07:44

    My first grow light was a Bestva DC series not even a year old started to run hot and luckily I caught it when the diodes started to melt, I have more than enough air circulation in my grow room. I have been trying to get warranty from Bestva but getting the run around. The Electric Sky I use now are great with excellent person to person anything. Do research before investing your money.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Cannabis Cultivation

Best Water For Weed Plants

Best Water For Weed Plants (Ideal Temperature, PPM, pH)

Growing Autoflowers Without Nutrients

Growing Autoflowers Without Nutrients (Is It Possible?)

Pruning To Increase Yield

Pruning To Increase Yield (Only If You Do It Right)

Best Humidifier For Grow Tent

Best Humidifier For Grow Tents (Reviews And Comparison)

Grow Tent Vs Grow Room

Grow Tent Vs Grow Room (Differences And Which Is Best For You)

Best Lights For Vegging Cannabis

Best Lights For Vegging Cannabis (Two Types Stand Out)

Quictent 4 by 4 grow tent

Quictent Grow Tent Review (Is The Slightly Higher Price Worth It?)

Carbon Filter Outside Grow Tent

Carbon Filter Outside Grow Tent (What You Need To Know)

Flowering Clones Back To Veg

Can You Switch Flowering Clones Back To Veg? (And How To Do It)

Secret Jardin Grow Tent Review (Great Value At All Price Points)

More Posts from this Category

Buying Guides

Best Timer For Grow Lights

Best Timer For Grow Lights (Reviews And Buying Guide)

Best Scissors For Trimming Weed

Best Scissors For Trimming Weed (Reviews And Buying Guide)

Best Digital Scale For Weed

Best Digital Scale For Weed (Reviews And Buying Guide)

Best Microscope For Checking Trichomes

Best Microscope For Checking Trichomes (Reviews And Buying Guide)

Best Fan For Grow Tents

Best Fan For Grow Tents (Reviews And Comparison)

Recent Reviews

Vivosun Grow Tent Review (Low Price, But How Is Quality?)

Bloom Plus Review (Good Budget Quantum LED Grow Lights?)

Aceple AG-6000 review

Aceple AG-6000 Review (Can It Really Substitute A Spyder Or Gavita?)

ChilLED Growcraft Review (A Viable Spyder Alternative?)

Viparspectra XS Series Review (Budget Price, Name-Brand Components)

Viparspectra Pro Series Review (Budget Quantum LED Grow Lights)

Timber COB LED Review

Timber Grow Lights Review

Rapid LED DIY COB Review

Rapid LED DIY COB Grow Light Kits Review

Meijiu quantum board 480w led grow light

Meijiu Quantum Board LED Grow Light Review

Kingbrite Quantum Board LED Grow Light Review

Kingbrite LED Grow Light Review

Recent Articles

How To Tell If A High Pressure Sodium Bulb Is Bad

How To Tell If A High Pressure Sodium Bulb Is Bad

6/2 Light Schedule

6/2 Light Schedule (Why We Don’t Recommend It)

Leaving Grow Lights On 24 Hours

Leaving Grow Lights On 24 Hours: Killer Yield Or Yield Killer?

What Size Grow Tent Do I Need For Plants

What Size Grow Tent Do I Need For X Plants?

How Many Plants Can I Fit in a Grow Tent

How Many Plants Can I Fit in a X by X Grow Tent?

Footer

Important Pages

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Resources

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Search

Image Reuse

Images on this site are free to share (unless attributed to a 3rd party), as long as you give credit to Grow Light Info and provide a link back to the page from which the image came.

Disclaimer

Some recommended products may use affiliate links. GrowLightInfo.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

*Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates.

Copyright © 2022 · Grow Light Info · All rights reserved.