Growing plants indoors can be challenging due to the lack of natural sunlight. Using artificial grow lights is an excellent solution to help indoor plants thrive. Grow lights provide the light spectrum and intensity plants need for photosynthesis and growth. Do grow lights for indoor plants actually work? The following benefits show they do.
Promotes Faster Growth
Grow lights allow you to control the light, photoperiod, spectrum, and intensity to optimize the growing conditions for the plants purchased from a locally owned nursery. This catalyzes photosynthesis, allowing plants to produce energy and grow at a faster rate compared to relying solely on ambient indoor light. With grow lights, you can achieve up to three to five times faster growth versus non supplemented indoor conditions.
Higher Yield
By accelerating the growth rate and maximizing light exposure, grow lights boost the plant’s overall productivity and yield. More light leads to bigger, lusher plants and greater fruit/flower production. Grow lights extend the effective growing season, allowing you to fit in more growth cycles and harvests throughout the year.
Supplements Natural Light
Even plants placed in bright sunny rooms don’t receive enough daylight intensity as outdoors. Grow lights fill in light gaps and ensure plants get adequate light for robust growth when kept indoors. They are especially useful for supplementing natural light in winter when daylight hours are fewer.
Better Quality Plants
In addition to promoting faster growth and higher yields, grow lights allow you to cultivate healthier, higher-quality plants indoors. The full-spectrum light produces stockier, vibrantly colored plants versus etiolated, spindly plants grown under poor lighting.
Wider Variety
With precisely controlled conditions, grow lights allow you to grow light-loving plants indoors that normally require full sun outdoors. This expands the variety of plants you can grow as houseplants or for food production.
Extended Growing Season
By manipulating the photoperiod, grow lights allow you to prolong or shorten the flowering/fruiting phase to time harvests. This makes it possible to grow multiple successive crops even in winter when outdoor conditions are unfavorable.
Space Saving
One major advantage of growing plants indoors with artificial lighting is the ability to maximize the use of vertical space since grow lights do not have to follow the same rules as sunlight. This allows for much higher-density planting and greater productivity per square foot of floor space.
Grow lights can be installed in stacked shelves or vertical towers to achieve multiple tiers of plant growth in a small footprint. This takes advantage of vertical room, allowing you to grow a high volume within a limited floor area.
With the right lighting fixtures, vertical wall space can also be utilized for growing plants. This is an option sunlight does not permit. Hanging lights along the walls or installing wall-mounted vertical gardens under lights can further expand the growing capacity.
Pest/Disease Control
Enclosed indoor conditions with grow lights help prevent pest infestations and diseases that can afflict outdoor veggie gardens and container plants. You have greater control over plant health.
Grow lights are a versatile technology that enables plant growth under precisely controlled indoor conditions. They empower home gardeners and indoor farmers to grow thriving plants year-round, obtain higher yields, and cultivate a wider diversity of plants. Leveraging artificial lighting is key to successful indoor gardening.