The Best Grow Lights for your Indoor Garden

If you're looking to grow plants indoors, you’ve come to the right place. Take your pick from our carefully selected range of hydroponic grow lights that will get your indoor garden thriving in no time at all. 

You don’t have to spend a fortune, you can get quality grow lights at low prices.

Each and every grow light is CE marked and designed to give you complete peace of mind and great results.

Unsure of what lights you need? Here are some of the common questions (and answers!) asked about our indoor plant lights.

Grow Light Questions and Answers

Which types of grow light do you stock?

We stock an array of options, with something to suit every situation and budget.

• Light emitting diode – LED grow lights

• High pressure sodium – HPS grow lights, including separate lamps, reflectors and ballasts

• Ceramic discharge metal halide – CDM / CMH grow lights, including separate lamps, reflectors and ballasts

• Fluorescent lights – T5 fixtures for propagation

LED grow lights

LED lights are our most popular lighting systems! We stock LEDs from the best manufacturers in the business, including Lumatek, Telos, Gavita and Omega. LEDs are always supplied as a complete unit – no need to worry about matching up reflectors and lamps, etc.

In terms of efficiency LEDs beat every other type of grow light, hands down: put simply, you get a greater light output from an LED grow light for every watt of electricity spent. Fixtures like the Omega Infinity LED grow light produce a ground-breaking 3.0 μmol per watt!

LEDs deliver mind-blowing output stats, whether you're looking at in terms of lumens or PAR. We'd always recommend measuring PAR over lumens: 'photosynthetically active radiation' refers to the light that plants depend on for growth, making it a more useful marker.

And LEDs aren't just highly efficient; they also produce full spectrum light that mimics natural sunlight. Full spectrum light (as the name suggests) delivers an array of colours, alongside the intense reds that are essential for flowering. Full spectrum light delivers rapid plant growth and greener, glossier, healthier plants.

Other types of lighting just don't come close in terms of performance. If you can afford the initial outlay, you should always choose an LED grow light. They're the best in the business and you won't find a better grow light!

There are plenty of options available, ranging from 18 watt propagation lights to the Omega 3.0 1000W Infinity, with something for every grow space.

HPS

HPS lighting fixtures have been around for decades now. They're not the most efficient forms of lighting, but they're capable of delivering BIG yields and they come in at incredibly low price points. Their output is much narrower than the full spectrum output of LEDs and CDM fixtures; it's concentrated mostly in the red areas of the spectrum. Intense concentrations of red light massively boosts fruit production, so HPS lamps are capable of delivering great yields. Our dual-spectrum lamps contain a little bit of blue light, which helps to reduce stretching. You can use a dual-spectrum HPS grow light for vegging, though there are much, much better options available. Choose an HPS grow light for the bloom phase, however, and you won't go far wrong. 

CDM

Ceramic discharge metal halide are a more advanced version of regular metal halide lighting systems. They deliver great results when growing plants at any stage - vegging AND flowering. That's because they have much richer, full spectrum outputs than HPS fixtures. This sun-like full spectrum delivers rapid plant growth. CDMs are not as efficient as LEDs; they output more heat, which can make them a great option in winter, when your indoor garden temperatures start to drop.

Fluorescent lights

Fluorescent lights, like T5 tube lights, are ideal for taking cuttings and germinating seeds and preparing seedlings. At these stages, plants require very little light. T5 units hardly any power and they'll get young plants through their earliest stages without an issue.

What components are in HPS and CDM kits?

If you’re looking for an old-school high pressure sodium or CDM set-up, then go for a grow light kit. They’re made up of:

• A grow lamp: to emit plant light, also called a grow bulb.

• A ballast: to regulate how much power goes to your grow lamp.

• A reflector: to direct light emitted by your growing lamps down to your plants.

You can also buy grow lights as part of a grow tent kit. If you’re looking to buy cheap lights, this is an excellent option. You’ll save money and you’ll be getting a grow tent that suits the intensity and footprint of light emitted by your indoor grow lights.

What wattage is best for grow lights?

The wattage of your grow lamp gives you some indication of the total light output. The intensity of your plant grow lights needs to suit your plants (and what they can cope with), the size of your tent and your overall set-up.

If your lights are too intense for your plants, they could cause damage to the plants leaves. Not intense enough and you will be limiting growth.

If your hydroponic lights are too intense for your tent, you can experience heat problems. If they aren’t intense enough for your tent, your overall yield will be low.

A lower wattage grow light is better during the propagation stages, and higher wattage hydroponic lights (up to 1000W!) when full size.

It's important to factor in efficiency as well as wattage. LEDs with higher efficiency levels produce more light for a given wattage.

What growing light should you use during propagation?

Low power fluorescent growing lamps are best (like our T5 grow lights). There are also a wide range of LED propagation lights now, and the rate of development in LED means that they are probably always going to remain at the cutting edge of propagation lighting. If you don’t want to use fluorescent, T5 or LED grow lights, you can sometimes get away with placing your propagator in your main grow tent under a main grow light; just make sure your plant grow lights are positioned right at the top of the tent, and your propagator isn’t directly under the light. 

What indoor grow lights are best for vegetative growth?

During vegetative growth, plants respond well to blue light. Blue light speeds up plant growth in the vegetative stages while reducing internodal lengths, keeping height levels down and making more efficient use of space.

LED grow lights are full spectrum and will perform brilliantly with indoor plants during the vegetative stages.

You can also use an MH (metal halide) grow light, CDM (Ceramic Discharge Metal Halide) Daylight Lighting System, or even (at a push) a dual spectrum HPS light.

What grow lights should I use for flowering?

Indoor plants will need red wavelengths of light for flowering. You can get this with either an HPS (high pressure sodium) or dual spectrum hydroponic light. Again, LEDs have all stages, including flowering, covered with their full spectrum output.

How does a cheap grow light compare to an advanced one?

Even the cheapest grow light can still be effective. You can get a really decent indoor grow light for less than £60.

LED lights are more expensive to buy initially, but their light output efficiency means that this will rapidly be paid back either in having to use less electricity to produce the same amount of light as HPS, or by adding further light which will directly translate into bigger yields.

The question is, how much is the extra yield worth? If it doesn’t matter, use cheap grow lights. If it does, go for an LED grow light.

How often should I replace my grow light?

Remember that every 1% of light lost costs you 1% of your yield, so it's important to ensure that lighting doesn't degrade too much.

Different grow lights deteriorate at different speeds. HPS bulbs need replacing once every few months and reflectors should be replaced once a year. LED grow lights last for much, much longer with lifespans that last for years.

What’s the best way to measure the output of a grow light?

Before you buy grow lights for plants, you want to find out how much plant usable light they emit. To do that, you need to know a bit about how plants use light.

The light spectrum is made up of lots of different wavelengths. For growth, plants can only use wavelengths of light between 400nm and 700nm. This is known as the PAR range.

Plants needs 8-10 particles of light from the PAR range (photons) to bind one molecule of CO2 during photosynthesis.

To find out how many photons are emitted by your grow light per second, find out what its photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) is. It’ll give you a micromole reading (µmol/s). Just 1 µmol is equivalent to 602 quadrillion photons! 

What are supplemental grow lights for plants?

Though plants can only use PAR light for growth, a broader light spectrum can really enhance growth.

UV-A and UV-B emitting indoor grow lights, for instance, are known to boost pest resistance while enhancing the taste, aroma, appearance and medicinal properties of your final yield.

To really broaden your spectrum in a HPS set-up, you will need supplemental grow lights – either a CDM (ceramic discharge metal halide) or LEP (light emitting plasma) will do the trick just nicely.