Best Reflective Material For Grow Room To Increase Cannabis Yields
WHY INDOOR CANNABIS GROWERS NEED REFLECTIVE MATERIALS
Almost all indoor cannabis cultivators will agree that reflective materials are an essential component of a high-performance grow-op. Sunlight is definitely the best source of light. But when you grow cannabis indoors, you must use artificial lights. And if you don’t want any of that light going to waste, you better invest in reflective materials. Using the right kind of reflective material can increase your yields by as much as 30% according to most grand master growers. The wrong materials will burn holes in your plants and might even reduce your yield. Here's what you need to know.
The Importance of a Reflective Material for a Grow Room
If you are still wondering why a reflective material is a great investment to have in a grow room, this section will answer that question. Before anything else, allow us to point out that light is the driving force in the growth of plants in a grow tent, not just for cannabis. The grow light emits energy that allows photosynthesis to take place even without being reached by the sun.
To use the light in its full capacity, one of the most important is the reflection. This is where the importance of a reflective material enters the picture. As it has been mentioned in the introduction, this increases the intensity of the light. You do not need to use multiple lights at a time. This also means that it is going to be an energy-saver. This makes the grow lights brighter and more powerful without the need to use more electricity.
According to some growers, the use of a reflective material will help to increase the light that reaches the cannabis by as much as 30%.
GROW TENTS
A grow tent is an off-the-shelf, self-contained cannabis garden covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling in highly reflective material. Most modern grow tents are available with various grades of Mylar. Recently, some manufacturers like GreenQube have developed a special white Mylar lining called Spectrax, designed for maximum LED reflection. Secret Jardin has also expanded their range to include grow tents lined with Orca grow film.
White, plastic-lined grow tents have become obsolete, and very few manufacturers still use this material. Shiny silver interiors are still the most common and probably the best value for money. For the average ordinary decent home grower, a grow tent lined with standard silver Mylar lining is really all you need.
Panda FilmIf you are still wondering why a reflective material is a great investment to have in a grow room, this section will answer that question. Before anything else, allow us to point out that light is the driving force in the growth of plants in a grow tent, not just for cannabis. The grow light emits energy that allows photosynthesis to take place even without being reached by the sun.
To use the light in its full capacity, one of the most important is the reflection. This is where the importance of a reflective material enters the picture. As it has been mentioned in the introduction, this increases the intensity of the light. You do not need to use multiple lights at a time. This also means that it is going to be an energy-saver. This makes the grow lights brighter and more powerful without the need to use more electricity.
According to some growers, the use of a reflective material will help to increase the light that reaches the cannabis by as much as 30%.
GROW TENTS
A grow tent is an off-the-shelf, self-contained cannabis garden covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling in highly reflective material. Most modern grow tents are available with various grades of Mylar. Recently, some manufacturers like GreenQube have developed a special white Mylar lining called Spectrax, designed for maximum LED reflection. Secret Jardin has also expanded their range to include grow tents lined with Orca grow film.
White, plastic-lined grow tents have become obsolete, and very few manufacturers still use this material. Shiny silver interiors are still the most common and probably the best value for money. For the average ordinary decent home grower, a grow tent lined with standard silver Mylar lining is really all you need.
The most popular reflectivity material is white poly plastic, popularized under the brand Panda Film. I use the thickest version of this plastic sheeting I can find. It has a highly reflective white coating on one side, and black coating on the other.
Panda Film reflects 75–89 percent of the light that hits it and is much more rugged than even the thickest Mylar. It’s easy to clean and hang, and is cost-effective and versatile in ways many growers don’t yet even know about.
Indeed, I’ve used Panda Film as movable grow-room walls by affixing the sheets to the ceiling as a way of framing my grow space, with lead weights on the bottom to keep the sheets from blowing in the fan wind. The plastic served as my grow-room walls, and I could sculpt its placement to precisely match my plant spacing, so the leaves always got maximum bounce-back of light. It’s like a custom-sizable grow tent without a frame.
Mylar Reflective Sheets
This loss of reflectivity is why many growers avoid the paint option in favor of using materials that attach to walls and offer higher reflectivity. Of these, the most reflective is Mylar, a thin, opaque material that looks like a sheet of silver.
Admittedly, it is tricky to attach Mylar to walls, and especially difficult to fix it to ceilings, because it’s a thin material that can easily rip, wrinkle or scratch. Mylar should be applied with the same amount of care as one would apply a window-tinting film on a car. The material must be absolutely flush to the wall, with no bends or wrinkles.
Any wrinkles in any kind of reflective material will create hot spots and dark spots. A hot spot is a concentration of light energy, while a dark spot is a deficit of light energy. When reflective materials are wrinkled, bent, or otherwise not flush to wall surfaces, they don’t reflect light evenly.
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