How To Create Sunlight Indoors For Plants?

If you live indoors and have no garden, you may despair about ever being able to grow plants – they need light, right? Do you know about how to create sunlight indoors for plants? That’s right; you can create an environment perfect for growing plants, even without a big garden and lots of south facing windows!

How To Create Sunlight Indoors For Plants?

It can be really hard to create enough light for your plants if you live in a dark house, or have only north facing windows which do not let in much light.

However, you can create the illusion of sunlight by using a few clever tricks:

• Hang mirrors. These work by reflecting what light there is and making the room appear brighter.
• Paint the walls white. Because white reflects the light, painting your walls a lighter color will help your plants receive more light.
• Add glass or water features. Anything that can reflect whatever light there is will be beneficial to your plant – so yes, you can buy that ice sculpture!
• Try LED lights. Replacing your standard bulbs with LED lights will make your home brighter, and will benefit your plants.

If you simply cannot make any of this work for your indoor garden set up, then why not have a look into plants which like low lighting conditions?

There are a great many plants out there which can cope – and even thrive – in shady areas with with very little light.

Another plus side is that these plants are generally very easy to take care of and require very little maintenance beyond the occasional water and feed!

This great video shows you some good ideas for how to create indoor sunlight for your plants, both naturally and with the help of gadgets:

Can Indoor Light Replace Sunlight For Plants?

Although there is nothing better for plants than pure sunlight, you can actually grow them pretty effectively under artificial lighting.

If you have absolutely no way of getting natural light to your plants, artificial light can work very well.

You don’t even need to splash out on fancy gardener’s growing bulbs – a simple switch to LED lighting can produce amazing results!

Sunlight emits far more of the red and blue areas of the color spectrum, making it more suitable to plant growth.

By finding a light bulb that offers more of this area of the spectrum, you can do your plants a lot of good.

This being said, plants will grow in artificial lighting with no specialist equipments, so don’t panic if you can’t splash out on fancy bulbs.

You will probably find that your plants’ growth is less than it would be if they were receiving more light – but they will definitely still grow.

What Light Bulb Is Closest To Natural Sunlight?

You can actually get light bulbs that mimic the sunlight, and some of these come pretty close to acting like our favorite star.

• A full spectrum light bulb is designed to emit light that is most similar to the light that comes from the sun. These bulbs emulate as closely as possible the light from the sun, plus they contain infrared and ultraviolet light as well.
• Halogen light bulbs are also up there with sunlight-copying properties – also known as White Light Bulbs, these can help your plants to thrive.

In general any light bulb that emits a high CRI rating is as close to sunlight as you can get – look out for bulbs that have a 90+ CRI rating.

How Do You Keep Indoor Plants Alive Without Sunlight?

If everything else has failed and you simply cannot create enough light to help your plants thrive, why not try some light bulbs?

It may surprise you to know that your plants will grow just as happily under lights as they will under the sun!

You can buy specialist grow lamps, that contain the right spectrum of light to help your plants thrive – these are available online, or at some gardening stores.

This being said, a plain old LED light will do much the same job of providing your plant enough light to survive and thrive.

How Do You Add Sunlight To Plants?

Adding sunlight can be as simple as just moving your plants – but if you don’t have the option of getting any additional sunlight, what do you do?

Adding sunlight to plants can be done without actually moving them, believe it or not!

1. Place your plants as near to a window as you can. This only works if you don’t have a south or west facing window – too close to direct sunlight will scorch the leaves.
2. Hang mirrors to reflect available light. When plants can receive light, even if this is reflected or diffused, it will help them to grow.
3. Put them outside. If you have the option, placing your plants outside when there is a bit of sunshine is a good idea which will boost their growth.
4. Prune and thin out the tops. To allow more light to reach more of your plants, try removing some parts of the topmost leaves, to give the light more of a chance to penetrate further.
5. Add more lamps. Although it is not the same as sunlight, artificial lighting can actually help your plants to grow.
6. Consider a grow lamp. If you have a VERY dark house with no way of getting light to your plants, a gardening grow lamp is a great option.

Here is a little article explaining a bit more about grow lamps, if you decide to go down that route to keep your houseplants healthy.

Final Words

Creating sunlight indoors for plants is easier than you might think, as hopefully you now know.

Growing plants indoors doesn’t have to be too much of a challenge; now you know how to create some more light you (and your pots!) will be laughing!