The three things that plants need to grow are water, light and nutrients. Based on the type of plant the degrees of these three things vary, but some amount of soil, water or sunlight for photosynthesis is essential. When you try to grow plants indoors, it's easy to give them soil, nutrients and water. But such plants don't have access to direct sunlight. If you want to grow an indoor garden, some type of light is essential.
The three types of grow lights available are Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL), Light Emitting Diode (LED) and High Intensity Discharge (HID). The CFL and HID bulb emit light in a particular spectrum, hence indoor gardeners would need to change the bulbs based on the seasons. However, maintaining two sets of bulbs is inconvenient and expensive. As HIDs produces a lot of heat, one would need to use reflectors and lots of airflow to save the plants from getting damaged. Though the CFLs produce less heat, they still use up a lot of energy and are best for initial stages of plant growth.
So what do LED growing lights do? The LED technology has really progressed in the past few years. Previously LED bulbs were not strong enough to grow lights. But now various companies have been able to develop LED systems that can produce light and strength required for indoor gardening. And these lights are much more convenient as they produce the light that is perfect for all stages of plant growth. Thus, one doesn't need to have two types of lights or change them mid season.
A single LED light is really small and emits light only in a single spectrum. However, the most advanced LED grow bulbs have several tiny LED lights in a spectrum that are required for the whole growing season. The LED grow lights emit purple color light as the plants use just red and blue spectrum. Even though the color of lights is purple or pinkish, they don't contain the UV rays that are harmful. Sun and other grow lights usually produce these harmful rays.
The biggest advantage of LED lights is they are not very expensive and need much less power to operate when compared to the HID and CFL lights. They run cooler than the other two types too. LED grow lights also last much longer when compared to other types of bulbs. Some bulbs are so good that you wouldn't really need a replacement for 10 years and as they don't consume power like the other two.
Unlike the buzzing sound one hears in CFL bulbs, these bulbs are noise free. LED lights are shock resistant and won't burn out suddenly. These lights have slow failure, which means that light would fail by dimming out slowly, but won't burn out suddenly. These are various types of LED lights such as Flashing LED, RGB LED, Bicolor LED, Pro Grow LED, Tricolor LED and many more types. Each one of them has unique features and characteristics.
Thus Buy Grow Lights, LED grow lights are best for indoor plant growth.