I live in Toronto. This means, when it’s winter and there’s less light, most of my house plants get super sad and they even drop some leaves. Some even go into complete dormancy and all I’m left with is a pot of soil. In the end, grow lights aren’t absolutely necessary. But if you want your house plants not only to survive the winter, but even to thrive through the season, then getting some extra lights might be your best bet.

I haven’t tried all the different types of grow lights out there, nor do I have the money to invest in too many, but here’s a list of the grow lights I use for my house plants and how I set them up (discount codes included!).

IKEA VÄXER Grow Bulb

I stumbled upon this grow bulb at IKEA and thought it was super stylish; and at $12.99, it’s very affordable. I ended up getting two of these along with two cord sets (link) and it came out to just under $40. By the way, be sure to check out the “As-Is” section for the cords because I found mine there!

I needed something to hang the cords up with and I conveniently had a mic boom stand that I wasn’t using. From there, I wrapped the cord along the stand, made a little loop at the top, and suspended the light around 30 inches from the floor. With two of these bulbs spaced about 20 inches apart, I managed to fit around 20 plants with 4-6 inch pots under them!

Sansi 30 W LED (My Favourite!)

This was my second grow light and it was powerful enough to replace both my IKEA bulbs from above! When I got this one, I switched over to it used it for the rest of the winter. During the summer, when I had no need for a grow light, I used this as a makeshift light source for plants that needed to be quarantined away because of bugs or because they were just new plants that I needed to check for bugs first.

When I used this light, I had it run on a timer from 6 am to 12 am. You have to play around with this duration though depending on the plant. Keep in mind that the distant between the light and your plants also matter. It’s easy to burn your plants if you have the light on for too long or too close to the foliage.

Here’s a photo from my Instagram of my setup with the mic stand.

Sansi 15 W LED

You can also get them at www.sansiled.com.

I got these from Sansi not long ago and I’m already in love! If you have a small space and don’t have too many plants, this is the one for you! I set up a shelf that’s about 30 inches high and I have two of these pointing from either side. I used these clamp lights from Amazon to position them so that I could easily point them elsewhere for other plants.

The thing with these is that I think they heat up a little more than the Sansi 30 W. So to be safe, I only run these for 13 hours (instead of the 18 hours like my setup above). Here’s a few photos of my current setup, I have to say I’m very happy with it!

Innova LED Grow Light

This one was gifted to me and it can be found at Costco in Canada! It’s very different from my other ones because it only uses red and blue light. It makes the room look like a constant party. What I love about this light is how it fills up the entire rectangular shelf space. It even comes with all the parts so I didn’t need to get extra cables or chains to position the light. Here’s a photo of my current setup:

Sansi 70 W LED

I recently received this brand new Sansi 70 W LED grow light and it’s so powerful that it basically replaced TWO of my other bulbs. I’m still testing it out, but so far in the three days that I’ve had it for my succulents, all my succulents reacted positively towards it. The succulents’ edges are glowing red, and they’re growing at a steady rate. I’ll update this portion of my blog in a month or so!

Q&A

Let me know your experience with grow lights and post your comments and questions below! I’m no expert in setting up the best grow system for my plants, but I’m happy to share with you all that I’ve learned as I’ve experimented with my lights!