When it comes to keeping plants alive, it’s not always a walk in the park. Full light, low light, indirect light, filtered light – all these sun requirements get a little confusing, and what do they mean?

Since light is one of the most important factors in ensuring your plants are happy and healthy, it’s crucial to know the light requirements of all the plants you bring home and to know the lighting you have available.

Windows facing different directions receive different types of light, and structures around the windows can allow more or less light to enter. You can have the biggest windows in the world, but if a building stands in front of them, your lighting levels are likely to change.

In case you’re eager to up your plant parenting game and or just want to finally know what the hell plant influencers and gardeners are talking about when they mention light levels, follow along.

Explaining the different light levels

When plant experts talk about light levels and light requirements for plants, they are referring to the amount of light a plant needs to carry out photosynthesis successfully or synthesize water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to create your own food (sugar).

As you can probably imagine, a plant will die if it cannot produce food for itself.

The most commonly spoken light types are: direct, bright indirect, medium indirect, and low light. While all plants prefer different types of light, most need one of these four.

What is direct light?

Direct light usually corresponds to the place where the sun is strongest during the day. Think about where the sun is during the hottest parts of the day: the afternoon and early evening. During that time, your plants sitting on these windowsills will receive more than four hours of bright, unfiltered light (provided you don’t have curtains or screens).

Keep in mind that even if you have a south or west facing window blocked by something like a building, trees, or covered with curtains or window film, you won’t get as much light. You can still keep plants in this window, but succulents and cacti may not do as well.

What is indirect light?

Indirect light is basically one more level of direct light – these types of plants live close to the forest floor in the wild, receiving less light than vines but still getting light filtered through the leaves above.

bright indirect light

Think of bright indirect light as light a few feet away from an unobstructed window, or perhaps directly into the window if it has sheer curtains or window film. In nature, this light is what reaches tree-covered plants such as vines or smaller trees such as dracenas that live under the canopy of larger species in the rainforest.

At home, you can find bright indirect light from any window, no matter which direction it faces. However, what matters here is how far you place them from these windows.

Bright indirect light in a south-facing window will be within a few feet of it, or near the window if it is filtered through a sheer curtain. You can also place the plants in an east or west facing window, where they will receive direct light during the morning or evening, depending on the direction.

plants like philodendrons or pothos they will thrive in bright indirect light and look great hanging or near windows.

medium indirect light

At home, this type of light usually comes from a north-facing window, where the least amount of light enters during the day. If you have windows facing east or west, this type of light will be six feet to eight feet away from the window, where it’s not as strong. On south-facing windows, it is about 2.4 m to 3.6 m away.

Plants such as calatheas, ferns and some pothos live and grow in medium indirect light.

While some plants like zamioculcas It is George’s sword tolerate low light, they prefer and grow best in indirect light. There are no plants that love being in low light conditions all the time, they simply adapt to living in a low light environment.

What is low light?

As it turns out, low light levels are found in places where a small amount of light enters. Think of places where windows are blocked by buildings or blocked by large trees.

*Via My Domain