There are literally hundreds of different types marijuana lights to choose from when talking about growing marijuana. The sheer quantity and many different types could confuse even the more experienced growers. But then again, the type of growing light you choose should be carefully thought of because it affects your yields more than you’ll know.

Different Types of Marijuana Grow Lights And The Pros and Cons

Now this wouldn’t be much of a problem if you are growing marijuana outdoors. However, most growers do not have the luxury of space I their backyard or their front yards to grow their weed so most opt for indoor growing. Here is where the complexity arises as you need all the tools you can get in order to stage and mimic a natural growing environment for your indoor marijuana plants.

So now we will talk all about the different types of marijuana grow lights and the pros and cons that come with them.

Fluorescent Lights (CFL)

Fluorescent lights, most often abbreviated as CFL or Compact Fluorescent Lights, could be considered as the most common type of grow light out there. Perhaps the reason why it’s commonly used is that CFLs come with standard light sockets so installation would not be a problem. Fluorescent lights are especially advisable when you are a beginner level marijuana grower.

Pros:

• Readily available and cheap
• Comes with standard sockets
• Available in different kinds of light colors (e.g. daylight and warm white)

Daylight CFL is advisable for use during the vegetative phase because it has more of a blue light which favors short but bushy growth. Then the warm white kind is advisable for the flowering stage since it has more of a yellow or red light which favors budding.

Cons:

• Low output so you have to place them fairly close to plants
• Not very power efficient

HID lights

HID lights or High-Intensity Discharge grow lights are fairly popular in the marijuana growing business. Many experienced growers prefer HID because they mostly result to great and many yields. The two common kinds of HID lights are Metal Halides (MH) and High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights.

MH gives off more of a cool or blue light whereas HPS gives off more of a red or yellow light. So like the difference between daytime and warm white with CFLs, MH is good for the vegetative stage and HPS is good for the flowering stage.

Pros:

• Very affordable
• Easy to install
• Known to produce good results

Cons:

• Can heat up quite quickly so you’ll need a cooling system
• rs budding.
• ment frelatively short lifespan
• not energy Not energy efficient

LED lights

Not very long ago, LED lights were only suitable for lighting regular rooms. However as time progressed, recent developments lead to LED lights being used as growing lights. Current LED grow lights produce more light in terms of lumens per watt and can therefore provide lots and lots of light. It also has great light penetration so it can reach the bottom parts of your marijuana plants even when your growths are tall or bushy.

Pros:

• LED lights are very energy efficient
• They are “cool” lights which means that they do not heat up that easily
• There is lesser tendency for your plants to experience light burn
• Easy to install

Cons:

• LED lights can be expensive
• Many false sellers in the market

Verdict

From the descriptions and the pros and cons discussed above, it could already be pretty obvious who won the battle of the growing lights. With a choice between fluorescent lights or CFLs, HIDs (whether MH or HPS), and LED lights, the best grow light award most definitely goes to the LED lights. Although it can be fairly expensive as compared to the other choices, you will eventually see that it is a wise investment in the long run.

LED lights do not heat up, and that is a very important factor since you do not need any more reason for temperature fluctuation in your growing room. Also, they are incredibly energy efficient and this claim is already tried and tested. This is true even for just the regular LED lights that do not function as grow lights. And they are very bright so you won’t have to purchase that many lights and you won’t have to place them very near to your plants therefore avoiding any kind of light burn.