Very helpful, thank you. Yes, I was thinking of CFL bulbs but if LED work just as well, I may explore that route.

Lightbulbs should be quite close to the plants to be 'usefull'. I see that you have variety of plants - do you have many succulents? They are high light plants, at least most of them. If kept relatively warm during winter (as living areas would be), they will grow more readily, and easily etiolate if insufficient light.

A lot of the cheap 3-5 light stands have plastic colorful reflectors. They look cool but will not be able to stand the heat generated from CFLs. And since the plan is to run them 12+ hrs I would definitely look for lamps with metal reflectors. Even if you are using LEDs that generate less heat. To me it is safer since they will be running for long duration and quite likely when one is not home to detect any problems.

You can also get clamp on metal reflectors from Home Depot or Lowes. They are about $8-9 I think.

I usually don't use lights for plants but I do have a small lamp with a metal reflector by my computer desk to add some light to the area so I'm not sitting in front of a bright screen in the dark. I tried using a small low Watt CFL but I think the heat generated by the CFL and trapped by the reflector cooked the electronics in the CFL and it quit working. This happened twice. I gave up and switched to a small halogen bulb.

If you can find any floor lame, the one with several light units on it. Use the LED spot lamps. Not that expensive at Walmarts and last forever and use very little electrity. Try to get at lest the 5000K light level, called bright light. Cool light or yellow is too low. Blue bright 6500K is best but very hard to find.

I just purchased some 4 foot LED replacement lamps for fluorescent fixtures at Walmart at $4.40 ea. Not bad. Brighter and cheaper.

I suggested 'cool' forCFL bulbs. I am not sure what is the proper name for LEDs. For CFL, I should have said "daylight". Here is photo of a box I have:

I have higher wattage and lumens, but it should be 'daylight'. Also indicated by sliding scale on bottom right, showing 6500K.

LEDs are more efficient and cooler (do not emit same amount of heat as CFL). Halogen - I think - and incandescent will emit even more heat, considering same wattage.

I agree that single bulbs would be better with reflectors; but since I do not use them, I do not know anything about the heat being trapped by them...I would think that metal reflectors that are quite wide (bigger diameter) should be OK.

I should clarify that I didn't intend to recommend the use of halogen bulbs for plants. They are hotter and use more electricity than other options. I only wanted to mention that I suspect there are CFLs that aren't good quality and can cook themselves.

Yeah heat from CFLs, in my experience, can cook their electronics. Better quality ones have much better heat shields internally. Happened to me several times. Once the base even partially melted. When CFLs are operated pointing down it concentrates the heat even more at the base and probably will burn out faster. I never run CFLs in cheap plastic sockets with cheap reflectors. Make sure the socket is porcelain, with metal outer shield and if needed metal reflectors. Otherwise it is a fire hazard in my opinion.

With regards to color temperature these days it seems the manufacturers have devised their own scheme. CFLs , by their nature can produce Cool Daylight around 6000K plus. To create a warm light they have to do some extra engineering. LED, on the other hand, are easier to make for the warm side so they have to do extra engineering to produce the cool daylight. These days it is increasingly harder to find LED that are more than 5000K. Probably it is more expensive and demand is not there. And they have started calling 4000K LED light as Daylight and ditching even 5000K lights.

Stan, what light spectrum and pin size of your Walmart purchase? As has been mentioned above T5 5000K LED's are hard to find. T8's are more common but usually use twice the electrical power over T5's

Howard, They are direct replacement for T8's with or with out ballast. Better to jump ballast out but they work just as well with them still in.

When talking heat in light it is measured in Kelvins and not the same as a bulb giving off heat like we normally think.

6500k is best but using 5000k works well for me.

Stan, my fixtures are T5. So T8’s won’t work. T8’s are always way cheaper than the T5’s. My T5’s are 5000K and 3500 lumens using 24W.

These are 5000K and 1850 lumens using 15 watts. Box says replacement for T8 or T12. I saw Walmarts on line has the same only 6500K. Too late for me. Already bought the 5000k's. Surprised to see 'Not shipped to store for pick-up' Got to pay extra for the shipping.

Yours are better but if cost is much higher, may consider mine.

Again, Stan, I can’t use T8 pin configuration. T5’s have a much smaller pin design compared to T8 or T12 which are the same. And yours are half the lumens. Thanks for thinking of me.

Agreed Howard but if you can get some used sometimes free fixtures, they could be converted easily into the new tech and big cost savings.

Already have 4-8’ units with 6 lights in each. Don’t really have room and finding used T8 units is difficult and believe or not they aren't cheap!

Just checked with web site I just ordered lights from. The T5 HO are much higher. They got some on sale a box of 25 for $200. They are 5000K, 25 watt, 3300 lumens. SuperiorLighting.com.

Where I used to work at, we took out all our old fixtures and replaced them with new fixtures with electronic ballast and new T8 tech. Shame we thru them all away.