Lighting may not seem like a complicated concept, but it definitely can be. You may think you can just put your new plant in any window or on your desk, but you should really be mindful of how much light your plant wants and how much you can give it. In the last post I briefly went into this with my cactus and succulents but not giving enough sunlight is not the only issue. Many plants do not like direct sunlight to the point that their leaves will burn and be permanently damaged. There are a few things you can do to prevent this, first you need to understand your space. A few months ago, I saw this Instagram post that illustrated very nicely the brightness of light within a room. The post was created by Mr. Houseplant or @nikolicvladan on Instagram.
Something this post does not talk about, is how window direction influences the brightness of the light. In the Northern Hemisphere, a south facing window will provide the brightness light all year around. Now if you do not have south windows, the next brightest would be east and west facing, this is because of the way the sun travels across the sky throughout the day. A north facing window will be the lowest light window, but this is still better than no light and some plants may be perfectly content in those conditions. You may ask, how do I figure out what direction your windows are facing and the easiest way to figure this out is to use a compass app on your phone, or you can obviously use a real one too if you have one on hand.
After figuring out which windows face which directions you can move some plants into place. Depending on where you buy your plants from, they may or may not have an ID tag and directions on how to care for that plant. This will include what type of light the plant needs to thrive. Unfortunately, not all plants come with tags with this information so you may have to do some of your own research on what type of light it likes. It may take some time to figure out exactly the right spot that the plant is happiest, but do not feel like once you put it somewhere it must stay there. If you want to try it out in another spot in your space that may have a little more or less light, just be sure to keep an eye on it just in case it does not like the change.
Finally, the part that I know the least about and I think is quite intimidating are grow lights. I bought my first grow light a few months ago and it is called the Miracle LED Ultra Grow Lite . I did not really know what to get but I remember hearing about the one I bought in a YouTube video, unfortunately I do not remember the video that I heard about it in. Anyway, I have been using it on a few of my plants that require a little bit more light than I have in my room, and so far, they seem to really enjoy it. The plants I have underneath it have been consistently producing new perfect leaves that are more beautiful than any leaves that came out in my care previously.
Last but not least, “Low light does not mean no light” - Amanda from Planterina
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