How far above your seedlings do you keep your lights?

[garden5]

I've seen pictures with varying heights, some looking like a full foot. I'm trying to keep mine as close as I can without causing the side-most plants to be deprived of light. The farther you have them, the more the plants get light, but the weaker that light becomes. I'm keeping the light (standerd T8) about 4 in. above the plants on average.

Out of curiosity, how far do you keep your lights? Also, please specify what kind of light it is as there are different distance requirements with different types of lights.

Happy Growing

[Gary350]

Keep your lights high enough so the heat does not cook the plants.

[rainbowgardener]

Fluorescents give off very little heat. I keep mine about 3-5" above the plants.

[bigdoug]

Under my florescent shop lights I keep them 2-3 inches above the plants

[a0c8c]

I've got mine about 4-5'' above my tomato seedlings, which are less than a week old, they haven't grown much more upwards yet(which is good since they won't be too leggy) but are enjoying the light.

[garden5]

It looks like the closest you can without cooking your plants is best.

What do you think about having the lights higher up so that you will have weaker light, but it will be consistent over all of the plants. When you have a lot of seedlings (as most of you certainly know ), the ones near the outside tend to receive less light than the ones right in the middle.

[serial_killer]

Best bet is to rotate plants or get more lights, you need to remember the inverse square law of light- each time the distance is doubled the amount of light reaching the plans is cut down to 1/4th as at the original distance.