Ppfd for the win!
There are many reputable light companies out there! I personally like growing under the Gavita 1700E series myself. Although HLG, amongst several others! Don’t make the mistake of using what I call a “blurple” style old tech led! The ones that look visible blue and red! That’s old technology. Most LED’s these days that are worth a damn run at least 720watts!
so when choosing a light your looking for “full spectrum” that means these same lights can be used for veg and flower! The most important part of using LEDs efficiently is measuring the lights PPFD which is short for photosynthetic photon flux density. Don’t be afraid of these big geeky science terms you got this! So what that is, is basically a measurement of the light intensity given between the top of the plant canopy and where the source emits from the lights! We use light meters to measure this! During veg or summer cycle I would be between 300-400 ppfd and not much higher. During the first few weeks of flower I’d like to generally increase the ppfd until by mid flower strain dependent (week 4) I’d be maxed out between 850-900 ppfd depending again on the strain. When the leaves are praying up at a 45* angle there happy! If the leaves are not praying and are pointing down light intensity needs to be lowered.
I included the industry standard tool for measuring ppfd the company is called an Apogee MQ-500 this is a “FULL SPECTRUM” light meter that is invaluable when cultivating under LED lighting. Here’s a picture of the unit