Welcome to a new episode from our Orchid Care for Beginners series.

Today we are talking about what to do if you don't have enough natural light for your orchid.

Can you still grow it?

Will it still bloom?

Well, with a little bit of help, yes.

Yes, it can.

You see, orchids are capable of doing so, so well under artificial light, which is a great help if you're growing your orchid at home in an apartment, you don't have any sunny orientation in your home, or you simply have a climate which is not very sunny.

Don't worry, the vast majority of orchids that are easily available and you can grow in your home will do absolutely fantastic with artificial light.

So today I'm going to try to demystify a little bit the subject of artificial light.

Don't worry, everything will be very beginner friendly.

And if you were ever very sad that you don't have enough light and your orchids never did well, well, stick around because it's actually much easier than you think to have absolutely results with orchids.

So before we start, as always, this series and this episode is sponsored by repotme.com, who offers you everything you could possibly need to properly take care of your orchids, from pots to potting mixes, fertilizers, accessories, and yes, even grow lights.

They actually have a new line of grow lights.

I hope it's not out of stock at the moment when I'm filming this.

It was very, very popular.

So I'll link you to that down below in the description.

After you've watched this video, you can check them out at any time.

You're going to find products, both for orchids and other houseplants as well, such as cacti and succulents.

And I'll also share with you my personal favorite products that I've been using for years and years.

Now you'll find everything down below in the description.

Right.

So that's it.

Let's start with I am nothing without my wrist.

All righty.

Number one.

Why artificial light?

Well, because it's better than very low light.

Even low light orchids such as Phalaenopsis and Paphiopedilum, they actually do better in brighter light conditions.

Definitely brighter than maybe what you currently have in your office or maybe in your home.

If you're watching this video, I'm presuming you don't actually have much light.

Maybe you have a northern orientation in the northern hemisphere.

An artificial light source is actually better than that.

If you have natural light, that is great.

And it's absolutely fantastic.

It is preferable.

But if you don't have, don't worry.

Artificial light can actually totally replace natural light.

And it is actually better than that shady corner in which you're trying to grow your orchid.

So when I say artificial light, what do I mean?

Well, I'm referring to anything from your typical light fixture that you have in your house, maybe a desk lamp, all the way to more professional fixtures such as a grow light.

Both of these fixtures can absolutely work.

Now, I won't go into the details of all of the types of light such as LED, fluorescent, all of that.

It does not matter.

Nowadays, LED lights, whether grow lights or home fixtures, are very popular because they are very efficient.

They don't consume a lot and they produce a lot of brightness.

So if you have LED fixtures, that's great.

If you don't, if you're using something else, that is okay as well.

You might want to consider a little bit how much they consume, but that's a totally different story.

So artificial light, as the anything that is not produced by the sun.

Are grow lights better than a desk lamp?

Yes, in my experience, they are.

I did make some experiments with a tomato because it grows faster than an orchid.

And yes, I did have better results and better growth with a grow light.

With my Phalaenopsis orchids as well, I did notice that they do bloom a little bit better in a more diverse spectrum.

We're gonna get to that.

But many years ago, I did grow my orchids in just home artificial light conditions and they did absolutely fine.

If you're a very very early beginner and you don't really know yet what type of grow lights to buy, you can just start with a desk lamp or whatever other source you have in your home until you get more knowledge about grow lights and what types you can find out there.

As I was saying, any artificial light source is better than low light conditions.

But overall, in my experience, yes, a quote-unquote grow light is giving better results than a normal light fixture.

Now, is artificial light suited for both lower light orchids such as Phalaenopsis and also higher light orchids such as Catleas?

Yes, it is absolutely magnificent for all of these types of orchids.

In my experience, there aren't too many orchid types that don't do well in I think they can do okay.

I personally run a medium light setup right now, which is okay with my budget.

So for the beginning, you don't necessarily need a spotlight in your home, a floodlight.

But generally speaking, yes, higher light orchids can benefit tremendously from artificial light as well.

There are only a few other orchids which still perform noticeably better in natural light.

So what types of grow lights we have there?

Well, the choices are this point.

Nowadays, you can find LED strips, LED tubes, single light sources, or some mounted on a sort of tripod.

You can also find regular bulbs that you can install in whatever fixture you want.

You can install it in your floor lamp.

You can install it in your desk lamp.

There is a multitude of variations and you can find them available in many different locations.

Some of these grow lights are advertised as full spectrum.

When you see full spectrum mentioned, just keep in mind it goes from somewhere in the purpley color spectrum to the red spectrum.

It doesn't have infrared and it should not have ultraviolet.

I'll stop here because I don't want to overload you with too much information, but you can definitely continue to research light spectrum and so on by yourselves.

But just the general idea is that full spectrum give you, theoretically at least, a wider spread of colors.

A normal light fixture in your home might only have peaks on the blue, let's say green and blue wavelengths, while orchids and plants in general need a lot of red and peaks on the blue as well.

So a good quality full spectrum light should provide all of the necessary wavelengths that plants need to properly grow.

Your home fixtures don't really provide all of these levels, hence why I was saying that I do believe grow lights are better than light fixtures in your home.

But again, any artificial light type is better than deep shade.

So the way you install these grow lights will have to depend on the type of grow light you're using.

I'm currently using shelves to display my orchids so I benefit from light tubes.

What I use is a combination of a yellowish light with a purplish light.

A pinkish light is not very purple.

I personally dislike the purple grow lights and they have fallen out of favor in recent years because guess what?

They're not needed for orchids at least.

But I do enjoy the color and how it looks like visually if I combine the yellow and the pink colors.

But if you have a single orchid, you can actually opt for one single lamp and Ripadmi actually has single lamps.

I do believe they also have multiple lamps so you can actually cover multiple orchids.

I haven't received yet these lamps.

They have just been introduced.

But you can definitely find multiple variations of light sources that might cater for what you I have hundreds of orchids so I need a very efficient light system and individual lamps are not really all that efficient for me.

Imagine having to plug in 200, 300 adapters in my wall.

No.

So bottom line, choice is yours what type of grow light you go for.

Just do a little bit of research first and see what options you have available.

Maybe I didn't cover them all and then you can make a decision based on what type of collection you have.

Alrighty, let's get into the How many hours a day should we provide light for our orchid?

I can tell you it's not 24 hours a day.

I would suggest you provide around 10 to 12 hours per day light.

Most of the orchids we typically find in our garden centers and flower shops are coming more from the Ecuador area of the world so they don't have much of a difference between night and day in their natural habitat.

And of course these are hybrids but still they maintain the genetics of the species used in obtaining them.

So 12 hours is absolutely ideal but if you want to save a little bit of money on your power bill 10 hours is absolutely fine as well.

I currently run 10 hours with my orchids just to save up a little bit.

That is absolutely fine but I wouldn't necessarily go very low or lower than this for optimum results.

You can get away with eight hours a day as well but that's kind of pushing it a little bit.

If you can do 10 hours a day that is absolutely fine.

And know if you keep your light on for 24 hours you will not have faster growing orchids.

Orchids, especially the epiphytic ones such as Catleas, Oncidiums, Phalaenopsis, Vandas, all of these things, minus the terrestrial ones I believe, they have a special way of photosynthesizing and they need a night and day light difference to perform their functions properly.

So if you keep an orchid in light all of the time it will not behave normally, it will not be happy.

So you need to provide darkness and you also need to provide a daytime period.

What distance should you mount your grow light at?

Well it really depends.

Anywhere from 20, 30, 40 centimeters above, I will make sure to transform it in inches and put it on the screen.

I cannot make the conversion like on the spot.

Anywhere from that to maybe even closer depending how powerful the light is.

Nowadays and especially with these light sources that I mentioned like the grow tubes and also the little lamps, they're not very powerful.

So you can go as close as around here for Catlea orchids.

You can also go as close as, this is so scientific, around here for Phalaenopsis orchids and it's okay.

I'm not very scientific about it because one, this is a beginner's tutorial and also I'm not that concerned with it.

As long as it's not one meter away and it's you know, not a very powerful grow light, it's fine.

If you go for those big, big, powerful fixtures that are hundreds of watts, yes with those you need to put them higher up above your orchids.

But again if you're a beginner, I don't suggest you spend money on those things because some of them might be noisy, they might be very powerful, they consume a lot of energy and they might be a little bit of an overkill.

You might just need a medium intensity light.

So with these medium intensity lights you can go pretty close just to make sure you're not damaging your orchid from time to time.

Touch the leaves of your orchid, maybe even the buds and the flower spikes gently and see if they're warming up too much.

If they're becoming hot to the touch, it's not good.

You need to push the light a little further up.

If they're cool to the touch or room temperature, that's absolutely fine.

Nowadays with all the led setups, you don't really get much issues because they don't emit a lot of heat.

So unless the light is touching any part of the orchid, which it shouldn't, you shouldn't have any issues with burning or anything of the sorts.

And in the end, if my explanation was too confusing and it wasn't enough, just experiment.

Don't like use common sense, don't put it here.

Put it at this distance first and see how your orchid does because most likely it will be absolutely fine.

And as a general idea, my shelves are around 40 centimeter high but the orchid is already occupying 20 centimeters.

So then I have the grow light 20 centimeters above the orchid or so.

That's on the shorter shelves and on the higher shelves, I have even 40 centimeters between the plant and the light.

So that would be my, let's say, golden area, golden ratio area.

But of course, you can definitely experiment.

So since grow lights should not contain UV, do you need to provide it?

Because there are some theories which say plants need some UV rays as well to do well.

And well, in my experience, you do not.

And I don't suggest you play with UV lamps either.

Just stick to normal artificial light or grow lights and do not go to the pet shop to get UV lights.

I would not recommend to anybody to play with those things and your orchid certainly doesn't need that bulb to do well.

Look at my orchids.

These are grown under artificial light, this one exclusively, this one too actually.

So for these types of results, if you like them, you definitely don't need a UV bulb.

Of course, the natural light that is not filtered by glass, you will give your orchids UVB.

But I cannot say I see a very, very ridiculous difference between the orchids that I have in natural light and the ones in artificial light.

So don't bother with UV lamps.

And lastly, let's weigh some pros and cons because everything has pros and cons.

There is no such thing as a perfect solution in this world.

So again, I will need to check my list just so I don't forget any.

So the first pro, of course, you have light on demand wherever you want it in your home.

You can put a grow light even in your basement, even in the shadiest corner of your home.

And it just provides you light whenever you want, wherever you like.

It's on So for your orchid, this will mean the difference between growing a healthy and blooming individual or having a struggling individual.

Next, there are no clouds.

Depending on where you live in the world, you can have periods of clouds even for days.

With grow lights, you will never have clouds.

So your orchids will not suffer for a week without proper light.

Next pro, you will offer adequate amounts of light throughout the year.

As I was saying, depending on where you live, you can have certain seasons where you don't benefit of long daylight hours.

So basically, your light will be constant all throughout the year and you don't have to worry about the seasons changing or not having adequate light for more than six hours a day.