Flat white Vs. Mirrors?

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Your Moms Box

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I know most of you guys choose Flat white paint over reflectivematerial such as aluminum foil for your grow rooms, but whatabout the use of mirrors? Do they reflect the right spectrum oflight and would it be comparable to flat white? Thoughts? ps sorry about the spacing, blame microsoft word...
 
Your Moms Box said:
I know most of you guys choose Flat white paint over reflectivematerial such as aluminum foil for your grow rooms, but whatabout the use of mirrors? Do they reflect the right spectrum oflight and would it be comparable to flat white? Thoughts? ps sorry about the spacing, blame microsoft word...
Go with the flat white paint. Mirrors won't do the job and they will create hot spots if i'm not mistaken.
 
I just found out on Jorge Cervantes' web site that, "Mirror finish is the absolute worst reflective surface." While he was talking about hoods, I still get the point.

DEAD THREAD
 
Wait a second your saying that a white reflector is better than a chrome mirror finish? Can someone explain the reason behind that?
 
villa029 said:
Wait a second your saying that a white reflector is better than a chrome mirror finish? Can someone explain the reason behind that?
Sure. When you look at a "chromed" or polished surface, it appears very reflective to you because you see colors in the surface. The surface is actually absorbing or negating lots of light to give you that reflection of color. A chromed surface reflects more infrared than white does also.

A flat white surface appears flat and white to the human eye for the same reason it reflects plant type light so well. No dark colors are reflected. Just the light that plants use.

Mylar works well because of the spectrum of light that it reflects. It's much different than a chromed hood. The reflected light is much more suited to plant growth.

The guy who does the lighting engineering at this one place I work, has about 100 BIG books on lighting that are all full of formulas and stuff. I never knew that lighting had so many thousands of variables. He told me not to stress out on it. They took him 6 years to read and study.

Pure flat white paint is your best bang for the buck.

Good luck to you man!
 
And if you do want to go with a reflective material get some mylar, aluminum foil will be hot-spot city.

Stoney, I was looking at these fiber-optic lighting systems for large buildings and houses and such. I was trying to figure out the wattage output of them and it was throwing all kinds of weird terms/conversions at me.
 
Biffdoggie said:
Stoney, I was looking at these fiber-optic lighting systems for large buildings and houses and such. I was trying to figure out the wattage output of them and it was throwing all kinds of weird terms/conversions at me.
I hear you man. If you took a look into one of those lighting books I mentioned, you'd see lots of weird math and expressions in formulas. I was impressed.
 
This one mainly involved joules (which I was familiar with) but mainly micromoles. I couldn't find a clear conversion anywhere. I'm gonna start a post about the lighting systems on the Coffee Table.
 

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