Total lighting beginner

[Gthumbz89]

Red and blue lights alone are sufficient to grow plants but plants do utilize other spectra of light using carotenoids and other pigments besides chlorophyll.

If you want to stick with led lights then I suggest buying par 38 23 watt white bulbs from 1000 bulbs.com. They are only 8 bucks and are very powerful. Unfortunately they have a small light footprint, and use the same yellow white spectrum as a high pressure sodium bulb (2300 kelvin). Overall I like these for growing though despite the quirks.

I attached a few pictures of my set up with a light meter reading or two.

The beam is super focused so directly under the bulb about 8 inches away I get 5000 footcandles. At a indirect angle below the bulb I only get 1000 footcandles though. Sorry the light meter is hard to see in the pics.