If your not lucky enough to have a greenhouse, or your window sill hasn’t the space for growing orchids, you always have the option of growing indoors with artificial lights. When you look at indoor growing you will see a few of options for lighting. Before anything though, you should do some research and planning first.

There are some things you can look at and consider. For one thing, will this light source be your only source for your orchids or a supplement to natural light.

What about the indoor fixture. Will it be in a living area or a growing room in the basement, and how large will the area be lighted. Know how much room will be needed between the orchid plants to the lights and the heating that will be generated.

Another thing is your budget for lighting. Its not wise to go cheap as growers know how crucial this part is for growing orchids. Go over and look at prices, bulb replacements and operating and maintenance costs.

Lets have a look at the types of lighting that are simple and ready available. We have High Intensity Discharge (HID), incandescent, and light emitting diodes (LED). Each on of these have there own positives and negatives.

High Intensity Discharge (HID) lighting is most efficient in energy consumption to provide light output when you look at the watts consumed. Two kinds of the HID lights commonly used are Metal Halide (MH) and High Pressure Sodium (HPS). You can see growers use a combination of both for growing orchids. These lights can be very bright and do output a lot of heat. Because of this they may not be a good choice for your home’s living areas.

If you do go for HID lighting as your primary light source (MH) metal halide is a great way to go. The spectrum of light metal halides output are blue which is why they are excellent for orchid pant growth.

(HPS) High Pressure Sodium are better used in conjunction with metal halides as a supplement light source. They promote or induce budding and flowering in orchids because they emit a light that lies in the red-orange spectrum. They are more economical with a longer bulb life and greater light output.

Next are fluorescent lights which generate very little heat so you can place the lights pretty close to the plants without you burning them. Incandescent lamps are inefficient and put out a poor level of light for plants. If by chance you need a supplement light on a single orchid, you can use an incandescent grow light but it wont give you the best results.

We now look at LED lights as they are fast becoming the latest addition in horticultural lighting. They produce very small amounts of heat and the costs can be quite high. In time though they will be more effective and used as supplement indoor light.

When looking into these light sources have in mind what your after and what size area you can work with. It is vital for growing orchids indoors that you also know your orchids type or specie and their most favored conditions for lighting, feeding and watering.