Need help understanding lighting

[safehaven]

I have an 8'x7.5' room for flowering. I a plan to flower 4 large plants at a time. When I install lights in the room, do I need to have enough lights to cover the entire room, or do I only need a light over each plant?

For example, Brand X says its light will cover 12 square feet. 60/12=5. For optimum yield, do I need 5 lights to illuminate the entire space, or can I get away with 4 lights, one directly over each plant?

 

[Major PITA]

LED panels?
Your math is correct, but only if the lights' footprints fit your grow room shape.
That's a big space for 4 plants, but should/could be awesome - especially for a SCRoG.
Short answer: I'd go with 4 lights; one for each girl.

 

[safehaven]

Yeah, I was thinking of going with LED panels.

There is so much information available. Everything seems to contradict the last thing I read, so it is making it very difficult to determine fact from fiction. Perhaps fiction is not the best choice of wording. It might just be like the old saying, "if you ask 9 plumbers how to do a job, you'll get 10 different opinions and none of them are wrong".

I have been wondering, and since you brought it up, perhaps you can answer me this. 4 large plants, vs SoG, all things being equal, which will yield more?

And, I should apologize in advance, I am completely new to this, so some of my questions may be elementary.

 

[Major PITA]

Others will be able to give you better advice since I don't SCRoG or SoG.
All things being equal (but they never are), a SoG would yield more, IMO. More plants and a shorter veg time. The shorter grow might mean an extra harvest each year.

 

[safehaven]

Did you edit your original post? I swear it said "SCoG". I took this as SoG (since I had not heard of SCRoG), as noted in my reply. After more research, I figured that perhaps you meant SCRoG.

SCRoG definitely seems like an interesting way to go.

Do you, or anyone else, have first hand experience with LED? I very much like the idea of not having to deal with heat. And, I love LED in everyday things like household light bulbs, flashlights, and off road light bars.

 

[Major PITA]

Yes - I originally left out the 'R' in my post.
I use LEDs but only as a supplemental light source. I need the extra heat and am able to control it with a cool tube fixture. Most LEDs don't offer that feature and so can put more heat into the grow space. My biggest concern with them is reliability. They are too expensive to replace every few years. They absolutely work great. Just know the upside and downside.

 

[Papageno]

I don't use LED. I SCROG on a HID. I can't help much with the LED but this video is a must see before you buy and HID setup. Everyday I see posts on here of HIDs set up wrong. This is just good info to have and mid way is a great chart about light intensity. There is a lot of info in here that is just good to know.

That place makes a lot of good videos.