Nice setup! And I'm sure you need the extra room! The black is to reduce the light or meant to be easy on your eyes or hide the fixtures?? Are the lights LED's?

Envy you that you can build shelf by yourself. I had to order one from HD. Half of my plants are just on the floor in front of a sliding door in the basement. Once the shelf comes, it will be better organized.

I'm jealous! Your setup looks great. I'm looking into a similar setup for a future indoor herb garden, so I'll have to mark this as inspiration. :o)

As is usual for me, I literally spent months gathering data and information regarding the building of grow racks and lights. As a result, I have adopted all of what I liked and left the rest. The black that you see is just black material in an attempt to keep the racks "pretty". (Not my choice but it does look nice.) Underneath the black material is a similarly sized piece of cardboard covered in aluminum foil. This is necessary to close the ends off and to contain the light. (The cardboard was completely adequate but it did not look "pretty".) This spurious light blockage is also appreciated during TV viewing in the adjacent room.

No, the lights are not LED. My research led me in another direction . I have now built five of these lights. I use CFL bulbs, galvanized steel stove pipe and repurposed bathroom vanity lights. For less than $50 I can build the light. The bulbs are extra but they last forever. I can mix daylight and soft white bulbs for an inexpensive and "full spectrum" array of light. My light bill is affected little.

I have other lights but I won't be buying any more of them. This is the least expensive light for a small operation, protracted out over the next decade or so.

hahahahahaha the last one, heeheeheeheehee Oh my I just can't imagine you keeping THAT promise,,, LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL,,,Yeah lets see how long it is before you build another one!!!! Rosie is still laughing!!!!!!

PS. Good luck to you Jeff!!!!!! (still really laughing hard!!!)

I like your black box valances. They do look nice and they block the light. They probably don't need to be black, if the cardboard and foil block the light, they could be any color you like... You could hang/tape photos of life size blooming violets on the valance!

I am a cheapskate... I use foil - it reflects light back.

Well, I have a girlfriend who thought the aluminum foil looked cheesy. So we have aluminum on the inside, cloth on the outside.

I have to admit the shelves I built years ago were completely on the cheap , made from pieces of pine two by twos with bolts holding the sections together and not terribly adaptable for plant heights of raising of lowering of lights when necessary and with of course the old fluorescent shop lights as the main source of light . I do believe for most uniform and symmetrical growth and dependable flowering even in winter the artificial lighting is the only way to go . Have to admit as well to not having strictly African beauties in my plant collection so light height could be an issue is sharing with the violets .