The Perfect Grow, Ep. 6: The Perfect Growing Lights for Cannabis

What Makes a Good Growing Light for Cannabis?

Well, the shortest answer is generally price. However this isn’t always true because, in most cases, more expensive lights have better technology and better research. Besides that, they often have spectrums designed exactly for the plant that you are growing, which in our case is cannabis.

Researchers have been able to find exactly what kind of light a certain plant is looking for and then design the lighting equipment that is best fit for those needs. It goes without saying that these types of growing lights bring drastic improvements in the way that plant grows. This is the reason why a $100 light you could buy on Amazon won’t perform nearly the same as a $1000 or $2000 light that’s specifically designed as a growing light for cannabis. And while these lights are great, most people won’t have that much money to spend on one lighting for their cannabis home-grow project.

Luckily, the amount of budget options that are coming out keeps growing. Simultaneously, their functionality is improving by incorporating the technology of the really good (and expensive!) growing lights for cannabis. This results in making them more affordable for everybody.

What Are the Advantages of LED as Cannabis Growing Lights?

When you grow in a small confined space like a grow tent, LED really is the only option for lighting. Scroll down to read what makes LED the best and most convenient lights for growing cannabis.

Dimmable capabilities

Great dimmable LED lights can support your cannabis plants throughout the entire life cycle. Dimmable capabilities allow you to adjust your lights to only a fraction of the power when you grow tiny seedlings, or push to maximum when you need to shower your cannabis plants with light in the last couple of weeks to get bigger fruits. This is one of the big advantages of using LEDs as cannabis growing lights. Other lights like HPS, metal halide, or fluorescent are all pretty limited with their dimming options.

LEDs are cooler

Again, LED lights stay really cool compared to other lights, and this is especially important for tent grow where you don’t have much air to circulate. A big power hungry HPS light is gonna heat up your tent in no time while also drying out the air and increasing the need for humidifiers and ventilation, and ultimately more power and money.

Power savers

For a similar brightness output, LED lights only use 60% of the energy needs as opposed to the other options.

Budget friendly

You can find pretty good LED lights out there for prices that are enticing. While these options are not as good as those $2000 options, the difference is pretty negligible, especially for a beginning grower.

What Specs to Look For?

• 1.300 power limit
• Wide multitrack footprint
• Dimmable down to 20%
• Contain high-quality diodes
• Contain extra diodes for UV and infrared

If you find a growing light for your cannabis that has all of these options (or similar) for a price around $500, you possibly got yourself a very good deal.

In sum, you are looking for cannabis growing lights that can get you through the entire grow cycle of your plants. And even if you don’t like it, you can sell it afterwards for almost the same price pretty easily.

Learn more on cannabis grow lights by watching the full video on our YouTube channel. Due to an age restriction, the video is only available in YouTube.