A plant can not survive without light; it is a vital factor in its development just like water. Without sufficient light or the lack of it would spell failure to your hobby or occupation of growing plants. It is therefore very crucial that lighting must be on the priority list of every gardener in order to assure its successful growing of plants. If you are the gardener and planning to grow your plants using a greenhouse, you have to start evaluating and researching what type of lighting would you be using in order to maximize their usefulness as well as making a great savings on your electricity bill as these lighting fixtures would remain part and parcel of your regular expenses. There are various things that you must be alerted if you desire to find the best lighting system for your dream greenhouse.

First is to determine the quantity and kind of lighting fixtures you will need and you have to sit down and evaluate your growing schedules of plants since there are different needs of light for every plant. Fruit tress, tall plants and flowers require more light than other certain plants and therefore would require sufficient number of lighting fixtures. Normally, outdoor greenhouses need around 25 watts per square foot to start with and base from these data you could start computing initially how many square feet is your greenhouse and divide it with this factor and initially you will arrive at the number of lighting materials you would need. While if you will build your greenhouse inside a structure, you would need not less than double the light you need when you have an outdoor greenhouse.

Second, since the kind of rays from the lighting fixture you would use are factors that influence the growth of your plants, you have to study how you would allocate a specific light that emits the kind of light that your plant needs to develop normally. Just like the fruit bearing trees and flowers, if you want them to grow and bear fruits and flower accordingly, you have to use high pressure sodium lights as their rays are of red spectrum and they induce the growth hormones of your plants. It would be different if you are cultivating green leafy vegetables for example which grow best under blue spectrum light waves so instead of sodium lights what you need now are metal halide that provide best for this kind of light.

Thirdly, your lights must not be too hot for your plants or else they would die, as there are some lights that are too warm than other lighting fixtures such as the incandescent bulbs. These incandescent lamps could supply the sufficient lighting needs of plants aside from the extra hot they emit and the best option to take is to use fluorescent lights which heat is lesser than the incandescent bulb. It is the best approach to compare each type of lighting fixtures as to the degree of heat they emit before deciding which lighting fixtures you would use.