Yes those are good enough lights for those plants to grow well for a short time, but the two Ficus are naturally giant trees. In a very short time they will start leaning straight for the light. It will be difficult to get a natural-looking growth habit from them with that narrow light arrangement.

One possible solution would be to check Amazon for "plug in pendant light". With two small hooks in the ceiling you could have a very attractive light arrangement with those same bulbs in a natural-light window that would satisfy hubby.

You would only need one light centered in a window, maybe 30" away. What may seem like a lower-light window to us is usually much stronger than an artificial grow light.

Is applying plastic film to the windows for winter an option? This will keep people and plants warmer and reduce your heating bills. When I lived in a drafty apartment with antique windows it made a huge difference.

We should check the numbers and find out. Converting Lux listed for your bulbs to lumens per square foot, at 12 inches away, each bulb emits 1328 lumen/sq. ft. I looked up light requirements for ficus and bright indirect light is recommended. Bright indirect light is considered to be 1000 to 2000 lumen/sq. ft. so you have plenty of light for the top two plants, in fact just 2 bulbs would work just fine. (Bright sunlight at noon is about 10.000 lumens per square foot to help show the relationship.)

You will have a problem with the lowest plant. It looks to be 3 feet below the lights, and at this level the lumens will be in the 80 lumen per sq. foot range. All 3 lights at this level will only give the lower plant about 240 lumens, the same as my pocket flashlight, and the plant will suffer. You should hang 2 bulbs over the top plants and the third bulb a foot above the lower plant.

The intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance so the intensity drop over distance is large.

Thank you so much for the comments! I will buy a socket extender for the third bulb to hang lower, and that should help the third plant. I actually moved the tradescantia and replaced it with stromanthe tricolor. So, the third plant on the lowest “shelf” is quite a bit taller than my tradescantia, and that should help as well.

I will consider moving the whole setup back to the window and keep the supplemental lighting along with the window’s natural light. But I would have to figure out how to keep them warmer, and that’s my main problem there. That room has a lot of windows and it would take a lot of work to apply insulating plastic films to all of them to keep the room warm (also has a very high ceiling, probably more than 17’ high or so). In contrast, the windowless room from my picture is MUCH warmer and no drafts.

Is it stupid to put a “sweater” type thing around the plant pots? I’ve seen them decoratively, but have no idea if this does anything for the plants. I feel like an idiot even asking lol. But I’m asking anyway out of desperation!

Thanks again, everyone! I appreciate your responses.

-Monica

Personally I would go with the window. The lighting will be good. The growth slows down in cold weather and shorter days but that is ok.........they will speed up growth again soon enough. As long as they are not freezing or close to freezing, they will be fine. If you keep the room at 68F, and they are 48F close to the window, they will still be fine and probably warm up on warm days. We started out in an apt. in NJ. It had big poorly insulated windows but the plants THRIVED there.