On White Color for LED Grow Light

LED grow light has become more and more popular in the growth of marijuana/cannabis all over the world, however, all cannot neglect one fact that the color ratio is a very controversy topic, and quite few of them are sure about that if their color ratio is good, although not the best, for marijuana.

First of all, all manufacturers and growers are clear that UV, blue, red, IR are important to the growth of medical plant, and they also know very well that Chlorophyll A and B are so important during the vegetative and blooming stage, even the function of carotene.

Artificially people are able to configure different kinds of ratio for achieving different growth result, however, they usually prefer to choose a specific color of LED only, like the ratio will be just in a certain specific wavelength such as 400, 440, 460, 630, 640, 660, 730/740nm, some will also add 520, 690, 850, etc , but in fact, these efforts are not enough to achieve the best result, as still a lot of other colors are missing which are also important to the growth of plant, such as 410, 420, 430, 455, 475, 500, 510, 530, 540, 585, 595, 600, etc, these LEDs may not as important as the previous mentioned ones, but they are still playing important roles during the vegetative and blooming stages, if without them, the plant is more likely get malnourished, this will be a big challenge to every designer and manufacturer of grow light, no matter what technology they may take, if we take look at this color issue at a very strict level, then almost all grow light in the markets are not qualified to be the good replacement of sunlight, although many growers are still content with the growth result by the fixtures they sourced in the markets, but they should know, if a good light fixture can provide real full spectrum light, then his grow experience could be more amazing.

It is known to all that white color is the epitome of all kinds of colors, and we also clear that cool white color and warm white color are of different wavelength, cool white are excited from blue LED while warm white color produce more red color; it has proved that cool white is more usually for the vegetative stage of plant while warm white for blooming stage;

We also can clearly see from the below color chart the difference in function of cool white and warm white color to the growth of plant.

The suns 'real' Kelvin temperature is somewhere around 5,800 degrees Kelvin, but because the sun is not a perfect 'black body' (the standard for calculating Kelvin temperatures of light) its adjusted Kelvin temperature is somewhere around 6,400 degrees Kelvin. 6,400 degrees Kelvin is predominantly 'bluish-white' light and this is the best kind of light and Kelvin temperature for vegetative growth – primarily because in nature the time of year Cannabis is in vegetative growth is during the long hot days of summer where the suns day length is the longest and receives the most 6,400k light. The reasons it changes for flowering is again because of the predominance of the kind of light found from the sun when Cannabis enters it's floral stage – usually at the start of Autumn or Fall when the days get shorter and the nights longer thus reducing down the day length significantly. Sunrise and Sunset account for almost 50% of the suns light during the short days of Autumn/Fall and sunrise and sunset are made up of almost entirely red spectrum light due to the angle of the suns rays hitting the earth’s surface. Therefore as sunrise and sunset account for almost 50% of the sun total light output at that time of year it necessarily follows that 50% of that light will be entirely in the red end of the visible spectrum – hence the 2,700k color temperature being favored for flowering. In reality a mixture of red and blue light is required in flowering due to the other 50% of the spectrum being more blue in color.

Now the question is that how to provide white color for LED grow light?

To be honestly, any color temperature over 4000K are easy to all grow light designers and manufacturer of grow lights, but due to some technical bottleneck of LED color, warm white is a big challenge to make, but now MasterGrow finally make it, see below our COB, it combines 6000K and 2100K as well as other colors in one COB, so some missing colors in some wavelengths are perfectly supplemented for both vegetative and flowering stage, white color is such a magic color which is able to provide a comprehensive colors that are very useful and important to the growth of plants.

We also can clearly see from the below color chart the difference in function of cool white and warm white color to the growth of plant.

The suns 'real' Kelvin temperature is somewhere around 5,800 degrees Kelvin, but because the sun is not a perfect 'black body' (the standard for calculating Kelvin temperatures of light) its adjusted Kelvin temperature is somewhere around 6,400 degrees Kelvin. 6,400 degrees Kelvin is predominantly 'bluish-white' light and this is the best kind of light and Kelvin temperature for vegetative growth – primarily because in nature the time of year Cannabis is in vegetative growth is during the long hot days of summer where the suns day length is the longest and receives the most 6,400k light. The reasons it changes for flowering is again because of the predominance of the kind of light found from the sun when Cannabis enters it's floral stage – usually at the start of Autumn or Fall when the days get shorter and the nights longer thus reducing down the day length significantly. Sunrise and Sunset account for almost 50% of the suns light during the short days of Autumn/Fall and sunrise and sunset are made up of almost entirely red spectrum light due to the angle of the suns rays hitting the earth’s surface. Therefore as sunrise and sunset account for almost 50% of the sun total light output at that time of year it necessarily follows that 50% of that light will be entirely in the red end of the visible spectrum – hence the 2,700k color temperature being favored for flowering. In reality a mixture of red and blue light is required in flowering due to the other 50% of the spectrum being more blue in color.

Now the question is that how to provide white color for LED grow light?

To be honestly, any color temperature over 4000K are easy to all grow light designers and manufacturer of grow lights, but due to some technical bottleneck of LED color, warm white is a big challenge to make, but now MasterGrow finally make it, see below our COB, it combines 6000K and 2100K as well as other colors in one COB, so some missing colors in some wavelengths are perfectly supplemented for both vegetative and flowering stage, white color is such a magic color which is able to provide a comprehensive colors that are very useful and important to the growth of plants.

The secret of HPS:

Now still most of the marijuana growers prefer to choose HPS as their first choice, although it has some shortcomings such as too much heat, big power consumption, short-life time, causing high humidity, easy to burn the plant, etc, but in fact, the grow result by these LED grow light is still far reachable to HPS.  

Why HPS is so powerful on the planting of marijuana?

Many people are obsessed by this headache issue, although normal LED fixtures are able to promote the flowering stage and vegetative stage, but its yield still cannot compete with HPS; if we want to beat HPS, we should know more of HPS:

 Spectrum of HPS  

Below is the spectrum chart of HPS, as we can see that peak wavelength comes from 580 – 610nm, it means that the flowering stage of marijuana needs most of them for good yield, however, such wavelength is rarely available in many grow LED fixture