Do LED Grow Lights Suitable for Marijuana?

LED grow light is the newest technology when it comes in growing weed plants indoors. It is very effective especially from the plant’s vegetative stage up to it budding period. Marijuana needs light between 420 and 750 nanometers (nm).The use of these special growing lights will help the marijuana plant grow up in the right time and pace, in its full potential and quality.

Many types of grow lights for marijuana on the market.

LED grow lights
Recently, modern technology has finally brought the ideal light to the market. Broad spectrum LED lights really do offer it all to the indoor marijuana grower. LEDs offer power consumption at approximately 15% of a similar HID, long life span of around 50,000 to 60,000 hours, no ballasts, no maintenance costs, no excess heat produced and effectiveness in all stages of the plants life.
Fluorescent and CFL grow lights  
They are now a little more popular to growers due to their compact size. Bulbs usually either target the blue spectrum used in the vegetative stage or the amber / red for the flowering stage however there are a couple of broad spectrum units available which should be suitable for growing marijuana from seed to flower. Fluorescent bulbs are available in a variety of types, roughly speaking they can be categorized into cool, warm and daylight light spectrum’s The daylight (white light) types work best but a mixture will also suffice. They are relatively cheap to buy and don’t need a ballast while their low heat output means fluorescents can be placed in very close proximity to the growing plants, indeed this is advised as their actual light output (measured in lumens) is quite low. Many growers use fluorescents for seedlings and young plants as their light demands are lower but there are better all round solutions like LEDs.

HID grow lights
High intensity discharge grow lights are the industry standard used by every generation right up to now. It is a fight between HID and LED these days and the LEDs are winning the race in recent years only. HID used to be the most efficient way of transferring electricity into light; you might have seen them in use at stadiums and tennis courts.
Two main types of HID marijuana grow lights:

Metal Halide (MH) grow lights 
Emit light with a lot of blue in the spectrum. This makes them ideal for vegetative growth however they are not very efficient lights during the flowering stage. Many growers use metal halide lights just for the vegetative grow phase and then switch to high pressure sodium (HPS) grow lights for flowering. Using a mix of both lights throughout the entire grow is one of the optimum ways of providing light for your plants.
High Pressure Sodium (HPS) grow lights  
Emit the familiar orange or amber light you might see in street lighting. This light spectrum (yellow, orange, red) is the most effective for the flowering phase of growth. Although HPS grow lights are not the optimum light for vegetative growth they work very well and are the most popular type of grow light for anyone who may be limited by budget to just one lamp. They also run more efficiently than metal halide lamps, emitting more lumens for the same Wattage. If you are only going to use one lamp and have not considered LED grow lights then this is the one for you.