Indoor plants and outdoor plants share a common interest: light. Understanding how to use grow lights to simulate sunlight to yield best results for your indoor plants is crucial for a successful hydroponic garden. The Basics There is a huge difference between the incandescent bulbs sold at the hardware store as “grow lights” and the right equipment for a productive indoor garden. By helping you understand efficiency, heat and spectrum, our staff of knowledgable grow light experts can assist you in selecting the best grow lighting systems to nurture your indoor plants. We offer the leading brands in compact fluorescent and High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights, including Metal Halide (MH), High Pressure Sodium (HPS) and combination grow lights and grow light systems, including a full line of  ballast, power source, output, reflectors and lamps of your choosing. We can help you navigate all the different products to help you determine the ideal set up. Space If you’re considering creating an indoor garden, you’ve already recognized the benefits of growing year round. You should consider the amount of space you want to devote to your indoor garden and the plants you want to grow. If you’re starting from seedlings to bring them to maturity they’ll need lots of light. Most apartments, modern in electric wiring should have enough power  to sustain your indoor grow light system. Below is a quick guideline of lighting needs for your indoor garden space or grow room. Fluorescent A tried and true light source to stimulate growth of indoor plants, compact fluorescents or High Output T5 fluorescent lighting systems are certainly an affordable option for the indoor gardening novice. Fluorescent grow lights simulate noonday sun.   Metal Halide If you’re growing vegetables for example, leafy greens like kale, spinach, and basil, you’ll need a metal halide bulb. Bulbs come in different sizes, ranging from 250 watts to 1000 watts.  Typically, indoor growers use 400 watts to 1000 watts, whereas smaller lamps are not as powerful to reach your achievable out come. Depending on your selection of plants and space you’ve allocated for your indoor garden, City Hydroponic offers a wide variety of quality bulbs and lamps to support your plants through all growing cycles. High Pressure Sodium HPS lamps will offer your plants the most lumens of light per watt  to ensure optimum vegetative or flowering growth simulating natural light during peak growing seasons (summer/fall/late fall). If you’re growing plants like heirloom tomatoes, strawberries, echinacea, chrysanthemums, high pressure sodium lighting systems are the best option to nurture flowering plants to maturity for your indoor garden. The Setup Depending on your space needs, you’ll find that you can achieve the best of all possible worlds if you choose to mix T5 Fluorescent bulbs along with your HID lights to combine metal halide  and HPS lighting systems using two-way ballast. City Hydro staff can help you determine if a mixed grow light system is ideal for your indoor garden.


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