A five-tier plant stand with grow lights built in

Most people who run out of window end up with clip-on lamps on every pot and a floor of cables. This stand replaces that with one piece of furniture: five metal shelves on a frame, four LED bars clipped under the shelves, a single plug, and a timer. It rolls on locking casters, so it moves for cleaning and stays put otherwise.

What the light does

Plants use light in the red and blue bands to run photosynthesis; the white light in between is what makes the leaves look like leaves to us. A 5000 K white LED covers all of it, which is why full-spectrum white has replaced the purple grow lights of a decade ago. Your plants get what they need and the room does not look like a nightclub.

The number on the box, four bars at 30 W, describes how much electricity the bars draw, not how much light lands on the leaf. What matters is distance. A leaf ten centimetres under the bar gets four times the light of one twenty centimetres under it. So the light bars are only as good as the shelf spacing, and the spacing here is what makes it work: each bar sits close over the shelf below.

What to put where

• Top shelf, brightest: seedlings, herbs, succulents, anything that stretches when it is short of light.
• Middle shelves: most foliage houseplants. Pothos, philodendron, peperomia, small ferns.
• Bottom shelf: shade plants, or the plants you are propagating, which want light but not heat.

The timer

Set it once. Twelve to fourteen hours a day for foliage, sixteen for seedlings, and the plant gets the same day every day regardless of the weather outside. Plants respond to consistency more than to intensity; a reliable twelve hours beats a brilliant afternoon followed by three grey days.

Assembly

It is a real assembly job, about half an hour with the included hex key. The bars clip on and the cables run down one leg. Once it is together it does not wobble, and the casters lock with a lever you press with a foot.