Indoor lights for orchids

[estación seca]

The shop lights are not the best but they are not that expensive and they work for many people. There is an enormous amount of information available about various lights. It takes enormous amounts of time to sift through. That's why it's a good idea to get recommendations at varying price points from different people and make a decision quickly, rather than suffer paralysis by analysis.

Color temperature is the appearance of the light to the human eye. When you see things like "cool white", "warm", "daylight" or numbers in degrees Kelvin ("3,500K") this is referring to color temperature. It has no bearing at all on whether plants grow well with that light. It only describes how the light looks to us.

[Dimples]

I’ve had great results with the GE 32 watt grow bulb (the one with the heat dispersing fins for “seeds/greens”) in a regular floor lamp. The lamp fixture points down and I have it above a side table away from windows. It’s about 3’ above the table and I get readings of 500-800 foot candles on the 20”x20” table at that distance. In another setup I actually had too much light for the plant under the bulb.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by skirincich

Sorry. I meant, "judged by the human eye..."

The High Desert Orchids website has come good information on LED lighting:

Growing Orchids Under Artificial Light
– High Desert Orchids

The owner has written articles and given talks through the American Orchid Society.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my reading of his article says that the Barrina shop lights essentially perform as advertised (he says he gets 18% less light than the specs...this is not a major difference in my opinion).

[Dimples]

18-32% less light than advertised seems like a lot to me. I don't know the industry average between laboratory testing and real-world results, but I'd be upset to receive any product with 1/5th to 1/3rd of the contents missing.

It may be a moot point since the measured output is still good enough, but the false/misleading advertising bugs me to no end.