Marijuana plants eat light for the same reason they eat nutrients, drink water and inhale C02. It’s all about your plants getting what they need so you get huge medicinal marijuana buds that are sticky with THC. But many growers aren’t providing maximum light to all their marijuana plants. And one reason is that they’re not using the best materials that bounce light back onto plants from walls and ceilings.
One common problem occurs with the marijuana plants on your garden’s borders; areas next to walls and out of the way are receiving far less light than areas directly under your hydroponics lights.
In fact, many grow room walls absorb light and store heat. You lose light, and you pay more to cool your room. So it’s best to ensure that every watt you pay for translates into light that hits your plants’ growing surfaces. You also want to prevent your walls from storing heat. Increasing surface reflectivity is a way to save electricity money and get better hydroponics marijuana harvests.
Not only that, but your need for grow room security gives you good reason to pay attention to thermal and radio frequency isolation. As you may be aware, government bad boys and civilian rip-offs use infrared radar or other detection devices to find hydroponics grow rooms but now you can get reflective materials that combine light reflectivity with other countermeasures to help prevent your room from leaking energy, heat or radio frequencies.
Until recent advances in hydroponics marijuana grow room design and materials technology, growers believed that flat white paint, Mylar, aluminum foil, white poly, Foylon, various insulating foams, industrial backing with a reflective coating, or other materials would work well enough to reflect light off walls and ceilings back onto plants. Here’s a video comparing two types of material…
Problem is, these materials have their own unique problems that take away from their ability to reflect light. Some are hard to set up. Others off-gas toxins into your plants. Some will make noise when your aeration system is on. Worse yet, many of these just don’t reflect as much light as you want them to.
Until a couple of years ago, Mylar was my choice. Mylar can be used as curtains that hang right next to your plants. You also use Mylar as partitions. I also used sheets of dimpled German aluminum, but they are very expensive and a hassle to place.
Remember that most Mylar is highly reflective on one side, but not as reflective on the other. Another thing to look into is modernized “Extreme Mylar” that’s sturdier and more reflective than traditional Mylar (which is relatively thin and easier to harm). Some of this Mylar has high reflectivity on both sides, not just one side.
Nowadays, I like to use hydroponics “diamond” fabrics that are strong, reusable, and as reflective as sheet Mylar.
Among the premier companies in this hydroponics reflective product niche is Easy Grow, a United Kingdom-based company that distributes an impressive line of hydroponics reflective materials worldwide.
One of my fave Easy Grow products is its Silver Lightite Diamond Diffusion foil. Its surface is dimpled to reflect more light. Internally, it’s fortified by pure aluminum. This creates an enhanced electromagnetic barrier for your grow room so radio frequencies, other electromagnetic tracers and infrared wavelengths are less likely to escape your grow room.
This is important because these leakages are security risks for your hydroponics marijuana garden. Police and rippers can find your marijuana by detecting radio frequency interference from outside your grow room. Easy Grow reflective materials help defeat that detection.
When I used to use Mylar in my marijuana grow rooms I found it had a decent amount of reflectivity but it also had big problems that made it costly and not fun to use. It ripped too easily. Also, it would pick up dirt and smudges, and it tends to crease and bunch up.
In contrast, Easy Grow reflective foils and sheets are thick, sturdy and resilient enough to bounce back smooth and shiny after I move them or store them. The Easy Grow products are coated with something that makes them resist scuffs, retain reflectivity, and resist corrosion.
These Easy Grow products are named “Lightite” because they totally reflect and seal light inside your grow room, which is another added security benefit (no light leaks) that also prevents stray light from contaminating your cannabis plants and screw up their bloom cycle.
Easy Grow has an intriguing claim for its Silver White Lightite sheeting. It says its material is “light spectrum enhanced” to give you higher yields. I take this to mean that not only do you get higher yields because more light gets to your plants, but also that more of the right wavelength of light gets to your plants.
As evidenced by the pioneering work done by Chameleon plasma lighting engineers and the engineers of BaddAss HID hydroponics bulbs, light wavelength enhancement is the bold new terrain for the hydroponics lighting industry. Your plants don’t just respond to light intensity, they respond to different light wavelengths the same way they respond to different individual nutrients in a hydroponics fertilizer formula. Enhancing the light spectrum means feeding your marijuana plants more of the light wavelenghts that produce larger, more potent buds.
Easy Grow is a United Kingdom company but their products are distributed in the US, so ask your retailer or visit them online. Hydroponics lighting and electricity are one of your biggest investments. When you use reflective products such as those made by Easy Grow, you get more yield and more THC per watt, which is what hydroponics marijuana growing is all about. You also get more security, which will help you sleep better at night 🙂
