The big problem when using light is its dissipation over distance.

Just a few cm are enough to lose a lot of it.

For the curious, the formula is called the "Inverse-square law", and for light dissipation, you can find the formula on this step's image.

So that being known, we understand that the worst when lighting your box is having a big distance between the light and the plant.

If your light is too far from the plant, so you have to put more power into it, but most of the energy you put in your light will be spread and mostly transform into heat.

Placing the light too far from the plant is like building some sort of heater more than anything else.

Now the problem is that most home growing lights are just one big source of light. LED components are very stacked together, and they're fed with a lot of current.

Unfortunately that's exactly the opposite of what you'd want if you don't want to buy energy to heat the air.

The problem this poses is that you can't put those big panels close to your plant, or you risk frying them if there are no dimming feature, but you will also lose a lot of exposed surface.

Most LED components will spread like at around 120 degrees. with much more energy focused in front of it, than on the sides.

That means, if you have a single powerful and dense source of light, bringing the light closer to the plant will greatly lower the covered surface.

So that's your dilemma, either you put the light far away for a large covering, but then you're burning energy into the air, or you put the light very close to the plant, and lose a lot of exposed surface.

The solution we found at SuperGreenLab is to do multiple small light sources, our panels are not only small, but their LED components are well spread apart, allowing for a good energy coverage.

Which also makes it possible to have LED panels that don't require heat dissipators, and are just warm at 100% power, so no risk if the plant touches it with one of its leaves.

So now that you have your light power spread into multiple smaller panels, it's all about placing them around your plant.

The other great thing with having multiple small panels is that you can spread them around the plant, which will produce the best possible light coverage.

As said earlier, LED components spread their light at 120 degrees, they're like small spotlights. And the problem with spotlights is that they cast very dark shadows, due to all light beams coming from the same angle.

So placing your panels all around the plant also mitigates this general problem with LEDs.