Growing plants under artificial light.

[Mr Impossible]

My living room is very dark and depressing, I get no light in there and have to have a light on in there most of the day but I want to grow some plants in there to cheer the room up a little and make it a more pleasant room to spend time in.

The plants I plan on keeping in there are Pothos, Peace Lilies and Snake Plants and I have installed some extra lighting in there but I have a feeling that its not going to be enough light for the plants. I really struggled to find any decent grow lights that I could hang up somewhere without it being red and blue so I just bought some white L.E.D light bulbs 6500K color spectrum at 1000 lumens per bulb, although those plants tolerate low light I still have a feeling its not going to be enough?

If I wanted to grow multi able plants under some regular ceiling lights in an area of a room at 12x10 foot and a 9 foot height how many lumens/lux of light would be recommended?

 

[oneeye]

Between 300 and 800 lumens per square ft will work, but the more the lumens the better your plants will grow. . Most office lighting will keep shade plants growing like crazy and thriving and that's only using them for 8 hrs a day. However it you leave them on for 14 or 16 hrs a day you can get by with less lights lumens. I use fluorescent lights for my plant room, but I have LEDs and HID lights but the soft fluorescent lights run cool enough to maintain perfect growing temps. Everything runs on a timer and now I'm in Summer mode with 14 hrs a day.

 

[Mr Impossible]

Between 300 and 800 lumens per square ft will work, but the more the lumens the better your plants will grow. . Most office lighting will keep shade plants growing like crazy and thriving and that's only using them for 8 hrs a day. However it you leave them on for 14 or 16 hrs a day you can get by with less lights lumens. I use fluorescent lights for my plant room, but I have LEDs and HID lights but the soft fluorescent lights run cool enough to maintain perfect growing temps. Everything runs on a timer and now I'm in Summer mode with 14 hrs a day.

I have some 1000 lumen 6500k bulbs but I guess after a foot away from the light the lumens will be much less. I'm going to conduct some experiments over the next few months with indoor lighting and low light tolerant house plants and see what can be done.

 

[oneeye]

The plants that you grow indoors will have certain lighting requirements. If you are growing sun loving plants you will need at least 400 to 800 watts lights about 3 ft above the plants. However if you are growing shade plants you can get by with a low lighting system like 400 watts lighting the whole room like the photo above. I learned from commercial horticulture container growers that in a office setting the overhead fluorescents will keep shade loving plants very happy. Now if you planted some daisies in a pot and put them in a office they wouldn't make it. If you planted some daisies and put them under a 400 Watt High pressure sodium light, the daisies would grow like crazy! This is a very wonderful time for indoor growing because there are so many choices to choose from when it comes to indoor lighting. We have so many choices it can be difficult to know which light is helpful or not. Please share with us your info from your up coming experiments. Mr impossible, check out the herb forum on this site and get a look at the Basil and Fusarium wilt thread of a indoor grow experiment.

 

[Mr Impossible]

The plants that you grow indoors will have certain lighting requirements. If you are growing sun loving plants you will need at least 400 to 800 watts lights about 3 ft above the plants. However if you are growing shade plants you can get by with a low lighting system like 400 watts lighting the whole room like the photo above. I learned from commercial horticulture container growers that in a office setting the overhead fluorescents will keep shade loving plants very happy. Now if you planted some daisies in a pot and put them in a office they wouldn't make it. If you planted some daisies and put them under a 400 Watt High pressure sodium light, the daisies would grow like crazy! This is a very wonderful time for indoor growing because there are so many choices to choose from when it comes to indoor lighting. We have so many choices it can be difficult to know which light is helpful or not. Please share with us your info from your up coming experiments. Mr impossible, check out the herb forum on this site and get a look at the Basil and Fusarium wilt thread of a indoor grow experiment.

I've decided to stick with low light tolerant plants for best results for indoor growing.

Here is a list of some plants I've selected:
Pothos
Snake Plant
ZZ Plant
Swiss Cheese Plant
Ficus Benjamina
Ficus Elastica
Spider Plants
Boston Ferns
Various indoor palms.

 

[kay_burton]

I think the lighting you have is enough for the good growth of plants. Maybe the problem is in the soil, is it good fertilized and is regular watering. The problem also could be in air humidity, or maybe you need to add some bulb near your plants.