Why Are Grow Lights Purple? Plus 3 KEY REASONS Why You Should Avoid Using A Purple Grow Light
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ค. 2024
- Have you ever wondered why some grow lights are purple? And do they actually work better than white ones? In this video we’re going to explain how and why some grow lights are purple, as well as look at three key reasons why we think you should avoid them.
00:00 - Introduction
00:37 - Short Answer
01:21 - History of LEDs
02:42 - Reason #1 Economics
05:07 - Reason #2 Plant Health
07:44 - Reason #3 Liveability
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Its crazy how quickly some of these technologies develop, compared to others. Feels like leds have been around since cars or tvs but nope.
Hi @GetUrbanLeaf I tried to download this but I didn't get any email.
@@kayy6109 - sorry about that! We're actually in the process of rebuilding a whole lot of our email automations at the moment and may have inadvertendly broken something on the back end. Would you mind dropping as an email and we can share it with you? help@geturbanleaf.com
I still use a burple light I have together with sunlike new ones, until it breaks I'll keep using it, excluding the visibility question it works reasonably well. Don't throw them away if you already have them. Just my opinion. Thank you for sharing. Compliments from Portugal 🇵🇹
I never liked them personally but agree if you've already got one might as well use it until it dies.
@@victorb145 yeah, they mostly suck and suck a lot more electricity...
@@pedrocoentro2009fir sure 😮and the diodes die fast on the Marshydro with the fans built in. I’ve had 2 and both lost diodes after a few months. I use the next gen of Marshydro now. Brilliant. Not lost one diode in 3 years on both lights 😊
I bought one in 2018, it has 2 switches for veg and flower, at the moment I'm not using it, what I'm using is a cheap amazon "600W" amazon light, came with sunglasses and everything😁only draws 60Watt and I'm using it vor veg, works very well for now, no fans and a lot less heat and power than the blurpee. Electricity is getting more expensive so maybe now it compensates to substitute the blurpee... Good luck!!
I blame the marijuana growers, they stated this crate with blue and red led grow lights. I started with fluorescent and fluorescent still give the best results, but generates too much heat.
Oh man I certainly don’t want my plants to lose their sexual desires. Thanks for the video!
My coffee plant bloomed and made cherries with a purple light. Not ditching it.
Oh how special!!
I tend to like to keep a mixture of light in my grow rooms !! A little bit of everything! I’ve found spacing purple lights every other light and mixture grow lights mostly white every other with a few extra led strips and also smal shop lights! All light can be beneficial it’s about the balance of it!
It's important to know the health of your plants which is difficult to see with blurple grow lights.
incredible video! thanks for making it and answering my question with the science to prove it!
Just keep an eye on your plants if it's growing then keep doing whatever your doing
Awesome video ! Love the graphs 🙏👍
I have bought a ton of mis grade blurpple lights when cannabis growing first started.
Switched to cobs and the colas we're bigger in size however the potency was lacking.
Added back some blurples to the mix and wala perfect combo.
interesting, good to know!
that was very helpful thanks.
Thanks very good and useful observation
Low wattage purple lights are good if you're trying to keep a plant alive and growing but slow growing because you need the extra time for crop rotation' I keep clones slow growing under 24 hours of purple lights because the mother crop takes quite some time to mature and if I didn't give those clones low power purple lights they would rapidly outgrow the space I have available.
8:58 I'll use a neutral light for my plants but personally my entire room is covered in a 30m long purple christmas light that my neighbor gifted me 😅 I have photophobia with migranes, so I'm really light sensitive, purple light is a bit more bearable and since it's spread out over a bajillion leds it doesn't hurt my eyes so much, but for my plants I'll start using a diff light!
Maybe wear sunglasses?
@@davidanderson8469 bad idea as I get more light sensitive the more I protect myself from light unfortunately, just have to bear it
I feel you I have chronic migraines and I just love the color purple it's so calming 😭
tnX for info, i have a question how can i differentiate with normal LED & grow light LED and whats real differences between them they light look a like
2 years later I'm glad I haven't even seen a purple light until today
Are these E26 110V 9W Grow light bulb good to grow cannabis?
8:21 Doesn't look like a fair test concerning light distance was used to very conclusive. I'd also assume you'd have throttle the 'white' LED by one third to compensate for overall intensity?
I remember taking a computer class back when everything was just text. It was black snd white. Then came color. New computers had two colors green or orange text.
I have both, mainly purple with 4 full spectrum leds for normal growth, full spectrum for inspection and just general lighting in my bedroom. That isn’t even counting the led strips lining my room.
My 3500k led grow light in my closet makes wintertime feel like summer
The only grow light you need is the Bonzai Hero grow lights from Holland. You can set them to growing or flowering and they really do work I have been using them for years. The reason why your leds may or may not work very good is how the dome/reflector or whatever it is called in english is shaped. A good led and perfect shape of the reflector/dome it sits in will spread the light the best way = a good result.
I think most people have their personal favorite color combination. I use blue/white leds in my grow tent for short dense foliage. Red tends to create tall spindly plants. My greenhouse uses white led (5K) shop lights. They supplement the weak sunlight that penetrates the triple glazing on the green house. The combination of natural light along with white leds seems to improve growth on my vegetable plants.
Personal favorite is one thing, and that’s fine, but the science behind plant health is another. Biology doesn’t have personal favorites! ❤️☘️
You are 100% correct the white lights perform the same result as grow lights however grow lights can work at a much lower watt and current as it only emits light that’s usable by the plant. If your attempting to keep costs low then this could be an option
agree. And these cost savings are significant if you're growing at scale (i.e. in a vertical farm). But for hobby gardeners at home the energy difference is almost irrelevant and we think the other factors outweight
My seedlings grew fine sitting on the back of my kithen stove under the cosy rangehood light. My niece gave me the tri color grow light and I've seen not much difference to be honest. My near by plants protested tho with leaves curling and wilting. I'll know more when the true leaves appear.
NASA was looking into the energy savings by selecting specific spectrums. But in space, every watt matters.
Have I ever wondered? Oh yeah. And I am hoping you have some answers.
I have the lamp that you have in your video. I always put the blue light on. Is that good? Am trying for my plants to grow.
blue spectrum is best for vegetative growth. if that's what you're after, then yes!
Purple light looks awesome
about 14 years ago I took Luxeon III 3W emitters, and using the graphs for Photosynthesis A and B, I took the integral to find the area below the curves, and used that as a percentage of total wattage, and then used red (670nm?), blue, and royal blue emitters according to the wattage by area. I added two "white" emitters per 100 watts for a more comfortabe "rendering" effect - apparently these "white" emitters "filled in the gaps" of green, yellow, orange and other frequencies.
The light still works today, and while not as bright as it was (but certainly enough that you do not want to stare at them), it STILL works better than any of those "full spectrum" or cheap China R/B/UV/FR lights.
Those weird purple COBs are NOT what you want.
I have some cheap chinese purple/full spectrum bulbs and grew my first plant with a very ghetto set up, no nutrients, no grow tent/room. I ended up getting 2 oz in the end. I did add some cheap white bulbs in the mix, then used the warmer white bulbs in the flowering stage.
🤷♂️
Always assumed purple, as in a mix of red and blue light waves, is important to a plant because it's reflecting only the green wave lengths.
Hence leaves look green.
Why are most purple grow lights advertised as full spectrum?
Ok very good channel Subd 👍
White light and UVA/UVB im using and my plants look healthy.
There is just a tiny problem to me, the strict green part of the colour spectrum.
If we see the leaves green, is it because they reflect this colour only and so it can travel to our eyes and then we see them green so it seems strange that it can penetrate the leaves.
And yes some plants have purples leaves but it is pigments which hide the chloropyle which is still green but.... same idea they reflect a part of this purples spectrum as well instead of absorbing it... . so these is also an attention to take about wich colour of leaves does the plant you wanna grow have. Then a full spectrum is also smart in the sence than whatever is the colour of your leaves reddish, greenish bluesih you will have a correct effect because there is always a big part of the light that the plant will absorb efficiently.
My thoughts exactly.
I used to think the same thing, but even though plants are green they don't reflect 100% of green light. They actually absorb a lot of it and some more of it gets scattered internally so it can penetrate deeper into the leaf then red or blue, ironically. And as discussed in the video, studies show that plants grown with full spectrum light are healthier than plants grown in purple light.
The purple doesn't block chlorophyll
While plants mainly use chlorophyll for photosynthesis, it's not the only way
A plant can still utilise photons ( photosynthesise ) using anthocyanins, the purple pigment
Why are purple lights not full spectrum? I have a purple light with IR and UV leds, the spectrum according to the manufacturer include green and yellow too.
Same as mine
Because they usually have spikes of blue and red while only small amounts of other colors, while technically full spectrum... the full part isn't really meaningful when using blurple
I grow corals and the only channels I use are blue uv violet pale blue cyan no white no red
I believe 2 white full spectrum LED nodes, to one orange, to one red produces incredible results. The ones I buy for my bonsai are 1 white. 2 orange, and one red ratio, it provides excellent results, but it’s slightly less than optimal than the first I described.
It really doesn't matter as long as they are giving high PPFD and they are full spectrum. Plants actually prefer a higher red spectrum during flower. I grew some great Runtz recently using a 300w blurple growlight from Philizon. It kicks out a hell of a lot of light for 300w.
we agree, mostly. I guess the point of this video (in part) is that it DOES matter what other colors are being emitted... Not all "full spectrums" are alike.
Awe man 😫 I just found a purple grow light in my lighting bag that I forgot I had. I hope my young plants will be ok with that until I can get an upgrade
they will.
A purple grow light...didn't know their perks of promoting sleep, and helpful to keep kodesh lol...thanks
Thx u
Before I knew much about lights I bought a "450w" CannaGrow COB LED. Then I find out its actually 150w! Now the plants have done well season after season but I just white shop lights 5000-6500 Kelvin to complement it
Why is it only 150 and what did you do after to get better growing
I wander what's the difference between regular lights and grow lights? It all seem to me like a gimmick. Unless someone can explain to me logically what's special about grow lights.
Doubt it completely crosses over, but it's very common in the aquarium world to turn off/turn down your blue LEDs to limit the growth of algae. It works shockingly well 👍
that 100% crosses over. blue light is what plants use more heavily for vegetative growth. It's the red(er) frequencies they use more for flowering.
@@GetUrbanLeaf Do you have a recipe for red and blue intensity? It is for an aquarium but I have snails to take care of algae so I'm thinking of turning up my blue light.
I thought I should add a little more. I've got highlight red plants in the aquarium. So I'm slowly upping the intensity of my light to find out where I like it the best and get good growth out of the more difficult red plants.
On a more difficult level I am trying to convert a holiday cactus to grow underwater. I know I'm crazy right? Not as crazy as you might think I've had some limited success. Emphasis on Limited, I'm thinking I could probably live with a few more snails if the blue light might get things moving again.
It seems that less light is always better to limit algae growth in a tank. The more light/longer duration is the cause of extra algae not just the blue light.
@@corymiller9854 It's a balancing act. If you don't have a planted aquarium you can control algae with light. But if you do want to planted Aquarium, you will need to strike a more complicated balance to allow for more light, or you may find yourself with a limited selection of low-light plants.
i have a brilliant idea... put lower power leds right next to the root or seed or bulb in the soil. see what happens.
I see Wide Spectrum lights now.
purple light is actually good
Have you noticed how many LED lights come with a controller which allow you to
change the lights color? The way it is done is that todays LEDs are capable of
producing all the different colors, how it switches is that the voltage is adjusted
to create the different colors.
!
That fact on the first screw in E26 LED light might not be totally accurate. I visited someone at a cool eco house back in 2006 and he had screw in E26 LED's in his house. First time I saw them and I remember it because it was cool.
How About Mushroom Grows? Will A Purple Grow Light Work For Mushrooms ? Box Says It’s A Full Spectrum Bulb?
Good question! Tbh we've only ever grown mushrooms a couple of times, so don't really feel qualified yet to be making a video about them.
I’m a prince fan and my house is a shrine to him.
I use purple every.
enjoy that purple rain! (or in your case, light ;)
So are white LEDs full spectrum?
They can be, yes. But just because they're white doesn't make them full spectrum. Humans don't need full spectrum light, plants do!
RGB is light color. RED, GREEN, BLUE. 255 parts of each = WHITE LIGHT. Isn't that FULL spectrum?
So your saying i can just use my study light for them ?
Not quite -- unless your study light has the proper spectrum for plant growth.
It’s about DLI. Once you learn that, you’ll understand. It’s the amount of light needed per day
I’ve used mine for years. Cheap and effective.
Would it be beneficial to use a purple bulb while I'm already using a mental halide ?
Good question! While the answer to this depends on the specifics of both your metal halide and the purple bulb to which you are referring, if your metal halide light is already sufficient, you will probably not get much additional benefit from adding a purple light.
Use a HPS for flowering or exclusively.
Okay, pretty good video up to the point at the end when you throw in some random pseudo medical jargon...
For my personal experience neither of those claims are true. I actually like what it does for my mood.
As for plants that might explain some things. Did not have good luck with mine and I cannot figure out what it was. Not sure but possibly it was the light.
I do have one of those purple lights for a small house plant but, I use it for myself.
I can angle some of them up so it's not blaring in the eyes....
Well, this makes me want to put the full rainbow of lightbulbs over my plants. I do like that the purple glow emminating from my windows let's passerbys know that I'm growing though.
The purple grow lights hurt my eyes a lot
Yeah - you’re not alone on that one!
There is too much blue in purple/pink LED light which harms the retina and blurs vision by scattering inside the eyeball. Much worse, the pink releases cortisol which in long term exposure is very unhealthy and crashes the immune system.
Does white light produce more heat than purple light? Also 15% electricity savings is a lot when you have a farm if it produces exactly the same plant growth results with white light.
Did you watch the video?
@@yaiirable ya
@@yaiirable ya
He specifically addresses industrial/farming cost savings
BUT how can you tell if the light vendor is unscrupulous & is just calling
his everyday shop lights FULL SPECTRUM when they are not?
!
I like them because they let me sleep at night while my plants 🌱 grow
I just wanna vibe with the purple hehe. My spider plant probably doesn’t need a grow light anyways
As much fun as purple light can be, it's best kept to a minimum in the home for the sake of eye health.
@@GetUrbanLeafdoes is hurt skin health as well? I don't wanna get melanoma at such a young age
I’m begging of you to make a 60 second video
that's a strong ask! What should our 60 second video be about....?
They cheap as hell from Alibaba, and they full range now. But yes balance matters . Mine run on solar .
I notice sunlight & sunshine is not purple. A bit yellow in the winter
but white in the summer. Never purple.
!
Follow the science.
Actually there is no saving, as the other colours are simply replaced by more red and blue LED emitters.
so you have bigger numbers of more efficient spectrum? Your comment doesnt makes sense at all.
Something to also possibly emphasize is that the single colors when combined, don't actually create the "seen" color, ex. red+ green don't actually make yellow, and red+green+blue does not actually make white. It just looks that way to our eyes/brain, which I know you did qualify correctly. It's just that many people don't necessarily pick up on that nuance.
You are 100% right on that!
Colour is a pigment of imagination
But what if I want purple buds
the light color doesn't determine the bud color!
Lower temps during flowering promotes deeper hues
People with purple grow lights got tired of DEA no knock searches. Just kidding. Hey. That Holonyak fella was born about 10 miles from where I live.
full spectrum is not really full spectrum either, i saw lights these days some has only 2 of the spectrum levels 3000k and 5700k and they say its full spectrum anyway to add 100-200 more to the item.
Hi George - I think you might be mixing up terms/concepts here. 3000K and 5700k refer to the light temperature, which is a visible 'average' of the total spectrum offered. The kelvins alone doesn't tell us about the underlying light spectrum. Either of these lights could be full spectrum (or not).
lol last point is subjective, I love purple lights ^^
many things are! If that's the case, go right ahead!
Eh. I already own one and I just use it to suplement my window's sunlight.
We are going to use time lapse to prove that germinating with sunlight spectrum cuts indoor yield in half.
6500K is the reddest light plants should see until 2 weeks into flower.
Because we can't get our lights as many million miles away as the sun is, penitration is the limitation of growing indoors.
6500K blurple is even less efficient than florescent 6500K.
2400K blurple is objectively dead wrong until the 6th week of flower indoors. Veging below 3000K cuts yield 75% indoors.
So the fact that flavors are better with 5000K-4000K-3000K whites is the least of what makes blurple trash before F6.
Well, I think all that is silly. Sunlight nor daylight is ever blue or green or purple.
Yellow sometimes, but in the brightest time of the day, noon, the natural light
is WHITE.
!
please bring your argument to those experts who created the purple light being used nowadays on indoor farms/nursery. maybe you find the right people who can deal with the information you sharing.
The opinion we’re offering here is really more applicable to at-home growers. In a commercial setting, there are additional factors that can make blurple more attractive 🌱👍
@@GetUrbanLeaf which factors? If its good to commercial farmers, why its not good to home growers?
@@tao4124 that's a bit like saying a tractor is good for F1 racing because, just like a F1 car, it has 4 wheels and an engine. Different jobs need different tools.
@@GetUrbanLeaf I am sorry, but its makes no sense to me. I just want leds that are efficient. There is a lot of leds, some more cheap, other more expensive, but I just want the best, without wasting so much electricity and heat. I watched some of these profesionals in these farms they use blue leds, red and UV. And it just works fine!!!
So you're saying if I have purple headlights then less people will want to sleep with me. Got it, I'll choose pink.
sounds like a cost-effective contraceptive :)
I totallyyyyyyyyy disagree with saying purple lights are ugly 🤨
As someone with sensitive eyes, white lights severelyyyyyyyyyy hurt, and I cannot handle them being near me, let alone being comfortable with their light. And then I can only have them for so long, which sucks because I wannnnt to look at my plants.
Switched to purple and now I’m muchhhhhh more comfortable, doesn’t hurt to look at them or my plants, it’s a very verryyyyy nice vibe at night time when u dim them down, they don’t randomly blind ur screens and such, or make u feel like ur living outside in the sun. Purple > white for me frfr. Wouldnt go back
Glad you're a fan of them!
The purple light is very irritating to the eyes
Lumens for humans, PAR for plants... buy purple + IR + UV. Is just that easy,
Absolutely no info in this info
Anything's better than that clip on light
none of your reasons were of any factual basis. red blue white are the best. you seem like your biased bro
Yeahhh he is biased ..he just want to sell his product more on his bulb grow light hehee
LMFAO learn what the spectrum does dummy
He doesn't know what he's talking about. He only did this video because he was bored...
The single main point, you completely ignored, as to why traditional grow lights are purple... has to do with the fact that all photosynthesis takes place in the Blue & Red spectrums.
Chloroplasts do not undergo photosynthesis at all in Green Light. Frequencies in the Green spectrum do catylize certain enzymes that effect plant growth & development, but Green Light contributes nothing to photosynthesis itself.
So the 1 & ONLY reason traditional grow lights were purple... is because the focus was put on the spectrums that are responsible for photosynthesis.
Furthermore, the fact that Green Light penetrates deeper into plant tissues, does not equate to plants utilizing that light.
Green Light is only absorb by the Carotenoid pigments in plant cells, & these pigments are abysmally inefficient at absorbing that Green light. Depending on species, only 2% - 20% of Green light is actually absorbed & provides excitation energy for various physiological functions in plants.
The primary function of Green Light in plants effects Cell Turgor, aids in the Osmosis of nutrients into cells, Catylizing certain growth hormones, Stem Elongation, & triggers the Stomata to open or close, in plants growing in forest understories.
Green Light contributes nothing to the photosynthetic production of food.
we covered this at the beginning of the video, and you’re right - this is traditional wisdom. I think you might be surprised by what some of the more recent science says about the impact of green on plant health, however. check out Prof Bruce Bugbee and his work
@@GetUrbanLeaf
The so-called recent science on the effects of Green light on plants, is actually not recent.
We've know since the early 50s, that Green light was "essential" for other physiological functions in plants. It is just that the grow light industry simply ignored the necessity of Green light, because it is not used for photosynthesis, & the focus was placed solely on the production of plant sugars.
This has lead to particularly annoying garden myths about how plants interact with different frequencies of light, such as... Green light is not essential or important, & the science had just simply been misrepresented for decades.
If you read plant physiology books from the 60s & 70s... they all discuss the roles Green Light plays in plant development.
For so long, growers have only focused on photosynthesis, which is absurd, because photosynthesis is only 1 "essential" physiological process in plants.
Photosynthesis may be the dominant process, but it would cease to function without all the other physiological functions that support it.
I thought you gave an excellent presentation but I do not understand all the hostility directed at you. Cannabis farmers can be so touchy!
just be logical...ist the sun purple?
No. But plants don't really like the sun.
Purple LED lights decrease sexual appetite? Hm, interesting. I will buy some for my wife.
😳❤️
Gamers like purple lights .. just look at modern computers
Don't get emotional 😭
it's hard not to, when we see so many people continue to use these silly purple lights....!
Wrong. The manufacturures did not "choose" the spectrums they produce. Solid state physics did. Certain semiconducters and combinations of semiconducter elements emit specific wavelengths of light. Actually, the photons emitted are of very pure, single wavelengths. Anyway, the physics drives the color emission, not the people making the lights. (Learn something before opening your mouth.)
no arguments on the physics. time will tell whether purple lights hang around, I guess. Sounds like you’re in for a surprise ;)
It's people those choose the semiconductors and hence the light spectrum. Unlike with pure noble gases, LED makers have a larger choice to influence this. But the only true healthy light source is still the incandescent lamp, because it is the red and infrared (the "wasted" heat) which regenerates the mitochondria inside our retina and so heals eyes and other cells.
The perfect grow light is right outside. Its called the sun.
good luck with that "sun" during winter in northern europe
Can you talk about plant need light rather than talk about lights 🤣😂
ermmmmmm.....? please explain?
@@GetUrbanLeaf isn't that what you did? lol
what is your educational qualification to make expert these comments ?
Hi Viren, we have engineers, plant scientists and horticulturalists on our team with a combined 40 yrs experience in this space.
Ooooooooo a whole team of engineers, plant scientists and horticulturalists?? Why not interview them on the channel and give your ‘opinion’ validity? As far as turning your video into an ‘I hate purple because [insert study] oh and I don’t like the look of it’ well, you loose any real credibility anyway. I don’t even have an opinion one way or the other on the efficiency of the purple light, but I do require information that doesn’t feel well …somewhat lacking.
Leds do not directly produce white light. There are two ways in which white light is produced from Leds as below:
Using a blue Led with a phosphor coating to convert blue light to white light by a process called fluorescence.
Combining red, blue and green Led to produce white light. White light is produced by varying the intensities of the individual red, blue and green chips.
So?