Info Read More
Grow light spectrum

Full Spectrum Bulb vs. Standard LED – Is a grow light worth it or do your seedlings not care?

One of my favourite parts of gardening is the experimentation that goes along with it. It’s a continual process of learning and improving on your findings. Recently I came to realize I just don’t have enough window space for all the plants I want to start indoors. A good solution for me was to utilize some old desk lamps for supplemental light that would easily pack away for the rest of the year. While I started by using any light bulb I had available I got curious whether a grow light aka full spectrum bulb would provide an additional benefit to the seedlings. In this video I put them to the test against each other to see if the extra $$$ for the grow light is worth it. I’ll show you the process and results from start to finish so you know exactly what to expect! 0:00 – Intro 1:21 – Planting 1:51 – Placing seedlings under lights 2:41 – Week 2 update 3:20 – Week 4 update 3:48 – Week 6 update 6:10 – Final Thoughts

Author Image
Nicholas

19 thoughts on “Full Spectrum Bulb vs. Standard LED – Is a grow light worth it or do your seedlings not care?

  1. How far apart were each? Or were they close enough that the full spectrum bulb was able to care for both, filling the void of the standard LED bulb?

    1. The lights were about 2 feet away from each other. I felt there was minimal, if any chance of light spillover affecting the other group in this case as typically you want your grow lights as close as possible, and there was only minimal, indirect light coming to the opposite group. Reason I kept them relatively close was so that they would get the same amount of ambient light and not skew results that way.

  2. If you want to use standard bulbs to start you should pick 3500/ 4000K CRI95 bulbs (natural colour and with CRI95 it´s pretty much full spectrum). Otherwise there´re cheap grow LED tubes, nothing special but enough to get the plants started, just be carefull with those cheap ones. They´re daisychainable but an end which hasn´t a wire connect has grid power exposed so if going that route, maybe spent a bit extra on some which can´t accidentially kill you. I´d say the reason the “full spectrum” bulb was doing a bit better, you used a 2700/ 3000K bulb which is lagging in blue wavelenght.

  3. Thanks everyone! As a newer creator here I’ve been really blown away by the interest this video has generated. My goal is to continue putting out great gardening content for everyone to learn from and enjoy. I like to present my projects start to finish, which can take many months before being ready to compile. If you enjoyed this one please consider subscribing as I have a lot of projects in the works, I just can’t guarantee a regular posting schedule for them! Thanks & happy gardening!

  4. Exactly as mentioned here, the grow light is 5000 to 6500K, vs the warm white regular bulb which is much lower around 3000K, considering that it did OK…

  5. You should have sacrificed a plant from each side to check the root growth I hear the blue light supposed to help a lot more with that

Leave a Reply

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