Any point to line grow room w. mirrors or foil?

ive got my plant in a little section of a closet and it has some sections. im only using one fluoro to grow and the bulb high enough to hit all the top leaves pretty well.

so is there any point to use mirrors or foil to reflect some of the light back up to the bottom leaves? does light hitting the underneath of a leaf do anything?

thx.

it wouldnt hurt. dont use mirrors. they abosrb light. i would say use some mylar.

mirrors absorb light? i thought someone would say theyre too expensive to get to line a whole closet, but to say they absorb...i thought that was the most reflective surface on earth.

im slightly confused on the mirror thing too, im using a large bathroom mirror to close off one side of my closet grow, keepin it like 22 inches wide. and a sheet draped from a shelf, to close it totally. i have some cardboard and some valeron that i grifted from work, i was workin on changin the sheet out fro those to make my space even smaller. but the mirror eh???

Ery

vandula said:

mirrors absorb light? i thought someone would say theyre too expensive to get to line a whole closet, but to say they absorb...i thought that was the most reflective surface on earth.

Click to expand...

Optics have 3 main properties.
Transmission (what gets past it)
Reflection the light that bounces back
And absorption. The light that gets 'stuck' in the optic.

Now, there is also spectrums. I deal with lasers for a living. A YAG laser will cut copper just fine, yet a CO2 laser doesn't like it too well (the CO2 laser optics/mirror are made of copper. It reflects that spectrum (10,600nm ) the best.

Now with a mirror. its a picee of glass with a typical 1.56 refractive index. Then on the backside is a layer of, usually silver.

The glass itself has a natural reflection (in visible range, 350-750nm) of about 4-8%. That is off the front surface. Then the rest of the light passes to the back silver coating then back out the front. Keep in mind that the 2 internal surfaces of the glass will also reflect the light within the glass layer. There is also the refractive index difference between the glass and silver layer.
And the refraction keeps it from being reflected straight back (or compliment angle.)

You can actually take a piece of glass (or mirror) and coat it and have it reflect (or preform) better.
(OK, *you* can't coat it, unless you got a vacuum deposition chamber in the garage. But it can be done.)


So no, silver isn't the most reflective stuff on earth. But also maybe. All depends on the spectrum and the other layers. The copper mirrors I deal with (with a Zinc Selinide coating) are dang reflective in visible. Seem to enhance the light when I bounce the ceiling lights off them. But they are designed for the far IR range.

With that I can't see a mirror being bad. I went with flat white paint. I feel the white will defuse the light a bit (of course with absorbing) What i plan on doing *someday* is to make a baffled deal. Little louvers reflecting the light back and up at a small angle. Probably out of oaktag or the like.

cheers

that's a gnar reply bro. ive heard mylar on this site for reflective surface but i still find it hard to believe that a mirror doesn reflect 100% of the light that hits it surface.

what do ppl feel about tin foil. it's pretty reflective and cheap.

I used mirror window tint in my cab.... before when walls were white plants stretched and had lanky growth.....now all of them are so tight and compact I can not believe the differance.....I also have side dual 36 inch T8s lighting as well and my babies receive 360 degree light...I even lined the floor so my HPS reflects back up....this is un-natural but the whole growing inside a box is also compared to outdoors in nature so I figured I would give it a try...

i didn't read the post (i'm not showing dissrespect) but both mirrors and foil are crap.Peace!!! Cheetah

yeah, mirrors are just plain terrible and foil is a complete joke. use titanium white paint.

so u guys are telling me white walls is better than using mirrors, how come when u shine a light at a mirror all the light seems to reflect back. if a comet or asteroid is to hit the earth, nasa has developed a plan to reflect light from the sun (using a mirror) unto the asteroid w. a mirror to alter the trajectory. why wouldn they use a white surface vs. mirror?

You lose a lot of the the light reflected in a glass mirror due to light going
through glass bouncing off the silver and then back out through the glass.

The reason I advise against foil is because you will get burn spots on your leaves and bud unless you are craftier than Martha Stewart.
http://www.respectrandomness.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/329474685_97120435a6.jpg

Flat mylar is more reflective than flat titanium white paint, but have you ever tried to hang a sheet of mylar? it bunches up and warps and distorts until you were better off without it.

White paint is easy. There is nothing more annoying than having to re-adjust some half-ass, pointless reflectors every time you enter your grow room.

what im hearing then is that mirror do not reflect 100% of the light, but doesn it reflect a good bit. it's a not a big deal to me, i just thought it'd be cool to have the light coming from above bounce back and forth through out the whole room. it's not a big deal. im growing my plant outside for the light 1/2 and then moving to the closet for sleep cycle.