Artificial Light (5602)

For houseplants to thrive in artificial light, they need light of a certain color, brightness, and length of time.  Light color is important when plants are growing under artificial light.  They need light in the blue and red portions of the color spectrum.  Common incandescent bulbs don’t have enough blue, so plants grown under them have long, weak stems, few leaves, and are usually pale green.  Ordinary fluorescent lamps don’t have enough red.  Plants grown under them are shrubby and have unusually dark leaves.

Plants grown under artificial light will grow very well under a mixture of light from cool white fluorescent and incandescent lamps.  A good rule is to have 30 percent of the wattage from incandescent bulbs and 70 percent from fluorescent.  If you want to build your own fixture, use two 40-watt cool white fluorescent tubes and 24 watts from an incandescent source.  An alternative is to buy a fixture designed especially for lighting plants, such as broad-spectrum fluorescent elements.  Fourteen or fifteen hours of light each day is generally enough for most houseplants.

One final word on using artificial light for houseplants:  if you’re trying only to maintain plants until you can get them back outside in the spring, lighting can be less than ideal.  But if you want to keep them growing rapidly and flowering profusely, you’ll have to pay attention to the quality, level, or length of light specific plants need.

For more information on this subject, Please visit the College of Agricultural Sciences Publications Web site.

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