Make your seedlings and houseplants happy with a bit of extra illumination

tching to start your seedlings off to an early start, but winter daylight not playing ball? Or maybe you want bushy, leafy houseplants even in dark corners? Give all your green-fingered ambitions a boost with energy-efficient indoor plant lights.

Normal household bulbs don’t give off enough of the right beams to satisfy robust plant growth, plus they’re not an energy-friendly way to add extra lighting. What’s needed is specialist grow lights.

There are three main options. You will find T5 HO fluorescent tubes that don’t burn out quickly – average lifespan is circa 20,000 hours (that’s a lot of tomatoes) – and are pretty cheap to leave on, don’t cost the earth to buy and give off a cool light, so it’s safe for your delicate plants to sit under for long stretches.

LED lights are even cheaper to run than the T5 HO fluorescent tubes and also emit a cool light.

High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights get quite hot, so if you go this route, position the bulbs a good distance from your plants so they don’t get heat damage.

In case you didn’t know, light comes in different colours. Daylight, for instance, is made up of all the colours in the rainbow spectrum, which is what plants need to grow. For maximum indoor growing, you want to replicate mostly blue and red, though, with an ideal ratio of five parts red to one part blue. However, you do want some of the other colours in there too.

So, when you go indoor plant-light shopping, look out for those that are full-spectrum or those with mostly red and blue.

If your plants’ leaves start to look pale or aren’t growing well, they could be getting too much time under the lights, whereas if the leaves take on a yellowish tinge it can be a sign that the light is too bright. In both these instances, trying moving the lights further away or having them off for longer stretches.

On the other hand, if the leaves are too dark and not growing well, they could be in need of more light, so bring the lamps closer and leave them on longer.

Here’s our top pick of the home indoor plant grow lights out there.

Best for: herbs and vegetables

Made in Belgium by indoor plant grow light enthusiasts, PlantSpectrum is a bit different. For a start, the casing has been designed to last forever, so all you’d ever have to do is replace the full-spectrum LED modules (they also sell the replacements), but as they will provide light for 50,000 hours (roughly 8 to 10 years of use), you don’t need to worry about that just yet. The slender 40cm bar can be positioned either upright on its stand or horizontally in a rack over plants.

This grow light isn’t just a pretty face, though it does look good. Its 92 per cent photosynthetically active radiation and 97-plus colour rendering index has been designed to mimic sunlight to such an extent that your plants produce natural-coloured leaves and flavours even if they never go out, so it’s a great choice if you’re growing edibles. Also available in an 80cm length.

More than just an indoor plant grow light system, Forest is a design feature that creates a green wall that’s part of an expandable system, so you can either live happily with your four-plant-pod vertical Forest or add more plant pods to it.

The kit comes with international power adapter plugs, a dimmer and full-spectrum, sunlight mimicking grow lights for up to four plants. It also comes with a four-year warranty on the LED boards and two-year warranty on the construction, which is made with anodised aluminium, so it’s light but strong.

The ‘trunk’ will reach a height of up to 2.78m (9.1ft) and there’s an extension kit available that will take it up to 3.5m (11.5ft). The price makes this an investment buy, but if you love the look and ethos of living beside plants, this system will win you over.

Best for: providing light to lots of plants or seedlings

Maybe a little more than you were hoping to spend? The thing is though, if you’re serious about your mini farm, this indoor plant grow light is the biz. It features full-spectrum LED bulbs, so your plants – whether you’re nurturing seedlings, prize dahlias or just want the bushiest houseplants of all your chums – will get all their light requirements met.

It features a 90cm x 90cm board with individually dimmable bulbs, so you can tailor different bits to different plants’ needs. The light stays cool, so plants won’t get torched and being LED, it’s cheap to run. If it’s too cold for the greenhouse, but you want to get a jump on spring, this one’s your baby.

Best for: having a programmable timer

The LED heads on the four bendy goosenecks of this indoor plant grow light mean you can angle and turn them to reach a fairly wide area. They feature three light modes and 10 dimming levels, so you can get pretty precise with your plants and seedlings’ needs.

You can also choose from red, blue or full-spectrum light, but most spectacular of all is that you can set them to be on a 24-hour timer. That means if you go away for the weekend, your plants can still be catered to and won’t even know you’re gone. Well, you wouldn’t want them to feel neglected.

This indoor plant grow light is usefully on a stick, so you can put it straight into the soil of a pot and give your houseplant something to grow towards. Alternatively, raise it up, as the height is adjustable, and its beam will fall on a wider area. The stick aspect also means it’s easy to move on to another plant, so they can all have their turn with a bit of extra va-va-voom in the illumination department.

The LED bulb offers the full spectrum of colours or choose whether to up the power on yellow, warm white or mixed colour to micro-manage for just what your plant needs. It has five dimmable levels, three timer settings so you don’t have to remember to turn it on and off every day and can be plugged into an electrical or USB socket.

Best for: all stages of plant growth

An indoor plant grow light with LED bulbs that emit the right balance of colour to promote all the stages of plant growth, from seed germination to flowering. This one comes with four heads with long wands on bendable goosenecks so you can angle them exactly where you want them.

There are three light modes – white, red and white, and mixed – along with 10 dimmable options from 10 per cent to 100 per cent. It comes with a USB plug, a choice of three timed settings of four, eight and 12 hours, and a strong gripper to hold it in position. There’s also a one-year warranty for peace of mind.

Best for: screw in and go

People often ask if they can just use an ordinary lightbulb instead of a specialist indoor grow light for growing plants and while the answer is still no, not if you want healthy growth, this bulb comes close to being that simple.

It screws into an ordinary light socket, but provides a powerful dose of the full spectrum of colours needed for healthy plant growth. It sits in a ceramic base, which the manufacturer claims dissipates heat more effectively. People who use this bulb tend to love it and can’t say enough good things about it, so for a simple screw it in and get on with it solution, this is the one.

Best for: the serious grower

Another overhanging indoor plant grow light for those with the space - whether that’s a garage, shed, greenhouse, or spare bedroom - and take their greenery seriously. This one measures approximately 76 x 76cm and provides full-spectrum LED lighting, a dimmable option, a timer, low energy consumption and a no-worry two-year warranty.

It runs silently and is designed to see your plant growth from germination right through to flowering. Probably not one for the houseplant brigade, but for those with more of a commercial bent or an allotment to fill as you need some serious spare space to set it up.

Best for: getting started with grow lights

A full-spectrum LED indoor plant grow light ideal for houseplants or to get a few seedlings off to a strong start. There are two light wands on bendy gooseneck arms as well as a Herculean-strength handy clip stand so you can attach it to a shelf or table edge, i10 brightness level and three lighting modes (red and blue; red, blue and warm white; or just warm white).

There are even three timer settings (3, 9 and 12 hours) in this little guy, along with a memory function, so you can set it to go off and on on a schedule and then go away for a few days without worrying what will become of your plants while you’re gone.

Mother Life PlantSpectrum's light is the closest thing to proper daylight that you can get, making it the cream of the plant growing crop in our eyes. While it is expensive, the fact you won't need replacement bulbs for up to 10 years cinches it against the competition.