Well, it depends on how much light is coming through the windows. Personally, I try not to have my plants on the windowsill, instead, I keep them under lights until I can move them outside. It also depends how well your Echeverias (especially) do on window sills. My Echeverias can't stand it for very long.

You can stop whenever you want, just always be cautious and acclimate when moving plants to a new location that has more light or else they can burn.

None of my window sills are very good for natural light any time of the year and once things warm up in late April or May I will bring them back outside to natural light.

Agree with comments by palms and Kevin.

BTW, keeping lights on from 12pm to 1am doesn't really make much sense to me: plants should have sufficient light during normal daylight hours - long 'days' with mostly weaker light will not help much. Your plants have relatively weaker light from am to abt. noon, then stronger (do not know what kind of light you are using) for additional 13hrs?...

Well, at my latitude, the longer days means a higher sun and in about a month the plants in my south facing windows will actually start to get less direct sun.

tj

TJ - Winter is best for my south windows too because some trees dropped their foliage and the angle of light entering my home is much better pas the evergreens. Sun position throughout the seasons makes a big difference.

Sofia - If you work shift then 12pm - 1am makes sense for lights, but otherwise just turn on the lights during the day during normal hours. If the added light is not helping growth to be more compact, then you will need to move it closer or use a brighter one.

Unfortunately taking them outside is not really an option, I live in Scotland and it rains a lot. I keep the light on from 12PM to 1AM because that's the time I tend to be awake, after closing shifts I usually sleep in until 10-11 and the bright light can be disturbing when I'm trying to sleep. I read that some people even keep their grow lights on overnight because it's cheaper, so I thought my plants wouldn't care much about starting morning a few hours later. They seem to be happy with the current arrangements. I don't think the morning light does much for them, the Sun is generally not very bright and not very high over the winter. We just had some unusually bright days recently, so I started wondering how I will be able to tell when would be a good time to start relying on the Sun again.

My window is also South facing, but it's a tilted window, so luckily I should be fine later on. But that's a good point to remember for when I move out (not sure when yet), I always just assumed that South facing windows are the best, full stop.

It's a bummer you can't put them outside... In your case, a southern window is probably best... Do you have any lawn space or anything?

Zsofia;

I apologize. I didn't know that you need to sleep in the morning and work late nights.

If you keep it dark first thing in the morning (until you wake up), then it make sense. Plants don't mind when they start day. From times you mentioned I was under impression they get many hours of light & hardly any darkness, which is, obviously, not the case.

Perhaps you read one of my posts where I described how I use lights. I have lots of plants in very dark basement, with not even a window for some, and very small window (that I cover) for others. I keep lights on from about 6:30pm until 7:00am. So they have 'reversed' day, but still experience proper daytime and nights. And yes, the electricity is much less during those hours. I do have lots of lights, so it helps some to keep them on at those hours.

If I kept plants in room with natural light, I would use the supplemental lighting as I suggested.

You could put succulents outdoors if it is possible to make some kind of a shelter: even just a plastic sheet that can be rolled up or down as necessary, just to keep too much rain off. I have used that for few years (didn't use it often, but it helped during few periods of extended rains we had). I had plants on shelves next to the garage wall. I stapled plastic to a piece of wood fastened to the wall just under the soffits, and other end had another piece of wood stapled to it. That way I could just drop it down if needed. No need to enclose sides - plants need air circulation anyway.

No worries, I must have worded it misleadingly. In general it's still not very sunny most of the time, but the past few days have been so bright that in the late mornings and afternoons the artificial light did not seem to be making a lot of difference, at least to my naked eyes, though the succulents probably still feel the difference. Officially there is 10 hours of daylight now - though I don't think it's bright enough yet, most of the time.

It's not exactly my lawn space, I'm only renting one room of the house. They might let me use some of the garden space for the succulents, but unfortunately the emergency sheltering would only work if I was home to put it up when it's necessary. Unfortunately it tends to rain quite often here. I was wondering if it would be fine with a permanent glass sheet cover instead, but that's not much different from being in the window.

Well, like Rina, I was thinking plastic. Plastic is a lot thinner than glass, so I am guessing it will let in more light.

Hmmm so would it be fine to leave them permanently covered on the top if it was clear plastic? Though of course first I'd have to get permission from the owner of the house if I would like to set up my stuff in the garden, so this is just a theoretical question.

Sofia - I figured you work on shift. I have friends who have similar schedules. =)

I built my own suculent 'greenhouse' shelter with 7.2mil greenhouse poly. Permanent clear plastic top which keeps out all the rain, storms, and everything: [Succulent Shelter with Poly Roof[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/succulent-rain-shelter-semi-greenhouse-dsvw-vd~3986618).

There was some discussion about how I crafted the edges, but I have now decided to leave it as is. The wood is fine and it has held up through many tough snow, ice, rain, and wind storms so far. Bigger than what you would probably do but something of a concept that could work.

Before this, I had a metal grow shelf which I covered in rainstorms like Rina. The heavy plastic I got free from the hardware store. They use it for bundling huge packs of insulation on wooden pallets (left around for garbage, I asked for it free).

If you would like to post your grow light setup, maybe we could offer some suggestions for you there if it isn't working as well as you hoped? There are many ways to optimize a grow light setup.

Sorry, turns out using the garden is not feasible :( But thank you very much for all the advice, I will keep it in mind for when I have my own garden ( - wishful thinking).

I don't have any problems with the grow light currently. Unfortunately my Perle von Nurnberg stretched out before I got the light so I will need to behead it anyway, but the new leaves are nice and compact. I might need a new setup for next winter if I get (or propagate) more succulents, but it's too early to worry about it just yet, I have no idea where I will live by next winter and how much spare money or space I will have.

Well, if you get a new place, keep in mind to watch for good windows :D

Yes, indeed :D