Want to garden like a pro? Here’s a simple and affordable indoor grow light setup

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Get a jumpstart on the warm and cool weather growing seasons AND grow food indoors year round with this DIY grow light setup.

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*Note: We’ve recently updated this article to include the latest LED grow light technology in addition to common fluorescent shop lights which can also be used as grow lights. Since the original publication date of this article, the price of LED grow lights has decreased significantly, making them competitive with or in some cases even less expensive than fluorescent lighting. As a result, fluorescent shop lights can be increasingly difficult to find, making LEDs a better alternative. 

Video: DIY fluorescent grow light setup and tips

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Gardening: An investment worth making

Our family grows a lot of organic food in our yard. By virtue of the fact that we live in Agricultural Zone 7b in Greenville, SC, we get to enjoy relatively warm/moderate temperatures throughout the year, although our winters can get quite cold (nighttime low temps can go into the single digits).

Nevertheless, we’re able to grow food indoors AND in our yard 365 days per year. One winter afternoon after it hit 5°F, we uncovered our low tunnel beds and harvested spinach, kale, miner’s lettuce, chickweed, and cilantro for a salad.

Yes, gardening does take time and money. But is it worth it? Yes!

For instance, The National Gardening Association estimates that for every $1 you invest into your garden, you get $8 back.

Grow lights: a great return on investment for gardeners

We love helping people learn how to maximize their Return On Investment (ROI) in their garden, get huge yields, and do it all using organic/permaculture growing methods. Of course, organic gardening has a range of benefits that extend far beyond money, as we’ve discussed elsewhere. (See: The surprising benefits of gardening you may not know about...)

The highest ROI comes from the stuff you can get or use for free. For instance, most people bag and throw out their fall leaves. However, leaves are an incredible source of free nutrition that you can use to feed your beneficial soil microbes, which ultimately helps you produce more delicious organic food. With a couple hours of work, you can get hundreds or even thousands of dollars in return if you use fallen leaves to build soil in your garden.

Some of the other high-ROI things you can do in your garden do require an initial upfront investment of cash. For us, one of the things that has made the biggest difference—and created the highest ROI—is making our own indoor DIY grow light system.

Since we garden year around and have a large garden, we’re able to produce thousands of dollars worth of seedlings for our large garden which then grow to become thousands of dollars worth of food we eat. That’s a pretty good investment on a few hundred dollar investment made many years ago. If only stocks performed so well!

Top three reasons to make your own DIY grow light system

You don’t HAVE to have a grow light system in order to have great gardening success, but it certainly helps. Here are three reasons we recommend serious/more advanced home gardeners make a DIY grow light system:

1. Get a jumpstart on each growing season

In our Ag Zone, we start our spring and summer seeds indoors in late January through February, then transplant them outdoors after the last frost date.

This gives us a 2-3 month head start on the warm weather growing season. Translation: we get to start harvesting much earlier and for much longer than if we were to direct sow our seeds outdoors once the weather warms up.

The same thing is true when we start our fall/winter seeds indoors in July-August, then transplant the seedlings outdoors in September-October. Also, if you’ve ever started seeds indoors without grow lights, you might also realize how hard it is to get enough sunlight through your windows (even south-facing windows) to keep your plants from getting weak and leggy.

2. Grow food indoors

There are indoor grow light systems you can use to grow large plants like tomatoes, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. The grow light system we use and recommend is designed for starting seeds for transplanting OR growing smaller plants like lettuces and other greens for indoor harvests.

Also, using the grow light system in this article, you can easily grow enough greens and/or microgreens to get a nice daily harvest. If you live in a particularly cold climate, this benefit might be especially attractive since it’s more difficult for you to grow outdoors during the winter.

3. Improve seed germination rates

We start a lot of seeds indoors and outdoors. No matter where you live, an outdoor growing environment is always going to be a little less “stable” than an indoor growing environment— varying temperatures, soil moisture fluctuations, etc.

You’ll use less seeds and have a higher germination rate by starting your seeds indoors under grow lights. Not to mention, there might be hungry insects or other pests that are more than happy to chew down an emergent seedling soon after it punches through the soil surface in your garden—not so when you start your seeds indoors.

You can improve your seed germination rates and plant survival rates by starting your main seedlings indoors, then transplanting them outdoors once they’re 6-9 weeks old. Plus, if you have an edible landscape, more mature plants are more immediately attractive.

How to make your own grow light system 

Both grow light systems we use (fluorescent and LED) have the following benefits/features:

• Relatively inexpensive and can easily pay for itself in a single growing season.
• Easy to break down and set up.
• Made with parts that can be ordered from Amazon or found at large home improvement stores like Lowes or Home Depot.
• Made with parts you never have to replace (except for the lightbulbs which need to be replaced every 10,000-50,000 light hours depending on manufacturer’s recommendations or visual signs that your plants are getting inadequate levels of light).
• Made with adjustable parts so you can raise or lower each row or each light, AND remove or add shelves as needed.

*Fluorescent bulbs produce 3x more light than incandescents, are energy efficient and non-heating. e.g. they’ll grow your plants with minimal impact on your energy bills. LED bulbs are even more energy-efficient than fluorescent bulbs. Since this article was first written, the price of LED grow lights has come WAY down, so we also have LED grow light options listed below. 

1. The parts/materials for your indoor DIY grow light system:

Below are the parts you’ll need to build your own indoor grow light system. Note: We’re providing info for two different sized grow light setups using the same basic materials, PLUS two different types of lighting systems, fluorescent or LED.

We make notes where applicable if a product is not needed for an LED system. Our recommendation: choose an LED system instead of fluorescent lights! LEDs may be a touch more expensive upfront, but they’re easier to find, costs are quickly coming down on them, and they use less energy.

Option 1: LARGE grow light system

The large DIY grow light system (parts listed below) has 6 shelves, but you can’t hang lights above the top shelf, so there are only 5 shelves to put seed flats or plants on. It can easily accommodate 10 standard seed flats at once.

This system is ideal if you’re growing plants for a large garden/edible landscape or if you plan to start hundreds of plants indoors at the same time like we do.

• Total cost: About $300-400 depending on the products you choose.

Option 2: SMALL grow light system

The small DIY grow light system (parts listed below) has 3 shelves, but you can’t hang lights above the top shelf, so there are only 2 shelves to put seed flats or plants on. The shelves are also smaller than the larger system, so you can  only accommodate 2 standard seed flats at once.

This system is ideal if you’re growing in a smaller garden/edible landscape or if you only plan to start/grow less than a hundred plants indoors at the same time.

• Total cost: About $200 depending on the products you choose.

Materials list for LARGE shelf grow light system:

• 48″ Multi-Tier Steel Shelving Unit (48″L x 18″W x 82″H) | there are a few product options here:
  • A tall 82″ chrome-colored unit with 6 adjustable tiers and wheels – product link
  • Same tall 82″ unit as above (82″), but black-colored – product link
  • A shorter 72″ high steel unit with 6 adjustable tiers and wheels – product link

• • 10-Outlet Power Strip – product link | quantity needed: 1 (it’s a 2-pack)
  • Open Oval Chain (black finish) – product link | quantity needed: 1 ft strips x 20 total strips (whole roll, 50′) | Note: Depending on the shop lights you get, you may not need the chain since chains are sometimes included with the lights. Or if you get one of the recommended LED lights below, you won’t need chains at all.
  • 20 S-hooks (can be easily adjusted with pliers) – product link | quantity needed: 20 for a 20-pack | Note: If you get LED lights, check to see what attachments come with them since you may not need separate S-hooks. 

• Zip Ties – product link | quantity needed: we used 10-12 but they come in a bag of 30 (you can never have too many zip ties around!)
• LIGHTING: Choose either LED of fluorescent lights, but we recommend LEDs.
  • Recommended LED light strips – We use Monios T5 light strips, hung two per shelf. These LED grow lights are thin and do NOT have a housing unit, which allows us to affix them right to the shelving unit while leaving plenty of space for the growing plants below. This means we can use all 5 available shelves. If you get hanging LED light systems with housing units, you’ll only have enough room to use 4 shelves. | product link | quantity needed: 2 (they come as a 6-pack, so you’ll get 12 strips if you purchase two products)

• • Alternate LED light systems – In case our recommended LEDs are out of stock or you want something different, we’ve included a few other LED options below. Note that these options will likely require you to modify your shelving units to a 4-shelf setup.  
    • 48″ 64W full spectrum LED light strip – product link | quantity needed: 3
    • 48″ 60W full spectrum LED light strip – product link | quantity needed: 3  marketplace=’US’ link_id=’dfb4f48e-f363-11e8-841e-3d02e29b0248′] per unit
    • 4 pack – 48″ 60W full spectrum LED light strips – product link | quantity needed: 1
  • Fluorescent lights 
    • 48″ Fluorescent Shop Light Housing – fluorescent housing units are no longer available on Amazon but may be available at your local hardware store or at retailers like Lowes and Home Depot | quantity needed: 10
    • 48″ COOL light fluorescent bulbs – two options depending on pricing and what’s in stock:
      • product link | quantity needed: we used 1 cool light bulb in each housing unit, or 10 total cool light bulbs
      • product link | quantity needed: same as above
    • 48″ WARM light fluorescent bulbs – product link | quantity: same as above

Materials list for SMALL grow light system:

• • 3-tier steel shelving unit (13″ L x 23″ W x 30″ H) – product link (*Note that the reason this unit is so much less expensive than a 5 or 6-tier shelf is that the width and depth are much smaller, so you won’t be able to put as many plant trays on it)
  • 10-outlet power strip – product link | quantity needed: 1 (it’s a 2-pack)

• Zip ties – product link | quantity needed: we used 10-12 but they come in a bag of 30
• 24″ LED grow light unit – product link | quantity needed: 2 (it’s a 2-pack)
• Note: You may be able to find fluorescent shop light housing + 24″ warm and cool light fluorescent bulbs at you local Lowes or Home Depot, but those items seem to be very rare now. Plus, that setup will actually cost a lot more than the LED setup we recommend above.
• (optional but recommended) Shelf wheels | Note: these wheels allow you to easily move the entire grow light shelving system whenever, wherever you want – even when it’s full of seed trays. | product link (4-pack) | quantity: 1

2. Getting the proper fluorescent bulbs for grow lights

If you’re getting full spectrum LED grow lights, you can skip this section. If you’re using or planning to get fluorescent lights, you’ll want to carefully read this section…

As you probably know, light is essential for plant health/growth. Sunlight contains ROYGBIV, the full spectrum of colors of the rainbow that we all learned about in kindergarten.

The two most critically important light spectrums are RED and BLUE light.

• Red spectrum light stimulates growth and flowering, but too much red light leads to tall, weak plants.
• Blue spectrum light regulates the proper amount and distribution of plant growth, ensuring that all parts of the plant take on the proper size, shape and density.

The color of light created by each type of fluorescent bulb is determined by its interior phosphor coating. When using fluorescent bulbs, we recommend using a combination of these two types of fluorescent bulbs:

• “Cool white” fluorescent bulbs offer Y/G/B (yellow, green, blue) spectrum lights for your plants. Cool bulbs have a kelvin range between 5000 – 6000K.
• “Warm white” provides O/R (orange, red) spectrum light. Warm bulbs have a kelvin range between 2700 – 3500K.

So, install alternating cool and warm fluorescent bulbs into your light housing as indicated in the materials list above and shown in the image below. This way, you can mimic nearly the entire color spectrum of the sun, thus growing healthy seedlings and plants.

3. Other indoor grow light FAQs

Below are answers to the most frequently asked questions we get about our DIY indoor grow light setup:

1. Are LED grow lights better than fluorescent grow lights? Which should you get? 

Short answer: yes, LED grow lights are better than fluorescent grow lights.

Longer answer: seedlings and more mature plants can grow well under either fluorescent or LED grow lights. If you already have a fluorescent grow light system like we do, there might not be any reason to replace it with an LED system, assuming the bulbs still work well and you have plenty of room to grow all the plants you want.

What are the benefits of LED grow lights relative to fluorescents?

• LED lights are far more energy efficient than fluorescents, delivering the same level of light to plants at about 50% of the energy output.
• There’s variability by brand and type, but you can expect to get about 50,000 hours of use out of LED grow lights before they need replacement, which is about 5x more than fluorescent grow lights.
• LED grow lights produce very little heat during operation whereas fluorescents will produce significantly more heat.

The price of LED grow lights continues to decrease each year. Since they can operate at lower energy costs and last longer, this means LEDs are almost certain to be a better financial investment over their lifetime relative to fluorescents, even if they’re presently slightly more expensive at purchase.

2. How many light hours do your indoor seedlings/plants need under grow lights?

Answer: Each type of plant is a little different, but generally speaking, your edible garden plants will do fine with 10-14 hours of indoor light per day. You can buy a timer if you want or just set an alert on your phone/calendar to remind you to turn the lights on in the morning and off at night.

Just like people, plants also need periods of darkness/sleep, so try not to forget to turn your lights off!

3. How close do you let your plants go to the fluorescent grow lights?

Answer: Keep your plants about 2-3″ from your fluorescent lights. If your plants start looking thin, leggy and weak, move the lights closer to the tops of your plants using your adjustable chains and S-hooks. If the leaves get scalded, move your lights higher (very unlikely to happen unless your plants are directly touching the bulb).

4. How often do I have to replace my fluorescent bulbs?

Answer: It depends on the bulbs you buy. Each manufacturer puts the estimated “lamp life” on the specs, which are often 20,000+ light hours. After a few years, if your bulbs are still working but your seedlings seem like they’re not growing as well, you may want to consider replacing them early.

5. How far do you keep seedlings under LED bulbs/lights? 

Growing plants under LED bulbs is a little more complicated than under fluorescents:

• Sprouts & young seedlings – For sprouts and young seedlings, the general recommendation is to keep LED lights 24-28″ overhead. However, we’ve found our seedlings do fine even when they’re much closer than recommended, at least under our Monios T5 LEDs in the DIY grow light system we recommend in this article.
• Growth stage – After your seedlings are a few weeks old, you can lower the LED lights to 18-24″ over the top of your plants. (Or raise your seed trays up by putting objects under them.)
• Flowering/fruiting – If you’re growing plants all the way to production (ex. growing strawberries or tomatoes), you’ll want your LED lights to be about 12-18″ overhead during this stage of development.

6. What trays, cells, etc. should I get and what starting mix should I get/make?

Answer: Since we’ve had comments and emails from this article asking what seed starting trays, etc we use, we’ll quickly provide a bit of info here, then refer you to more detailed articles/videos we’ve created on that topic:

• Trays – Because we got tired of throwing away flimsy trays after one or two growing seasons, we now prefer these extra strength trays because they’re BPA-Free, SUPER durable, and also created by a local (to us) NC farmer who needed supplies that lasted longer than the current options: 5 pack & 10 pack
• Heat mat – Essential for getting good seed germination when starting tomatoes, peppers, and other summer nightshades indoors: 48″ x 20″ heat mat & thermostat to control temps

Want to learn more about seed starting? We have three free seed starting video classes (plus a free ebook) if you want to get the answers to all your seed starting questions. Plus, we also have a detailed guide showing you how to use Ladbrooke soil blockers.