Grow light bulbs at HOME: HortiPower vs IKEA Växer

Grow light bulbs: HortiPower vs Ikea Växer

In this blog post we are going to compare lightbulbs for plant propagation; the IKEA Växer with HortiPower Bloomer 2. These lights are typically used for indoor plants.

This blog was updated on 27 July 2022, 6 March 2023 and 25 September 2023. 

• The IKEA Växer is made for living room plants. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 can also grow herbs, leafy greens, flowers, succulents, berries and seedlings for fruiting vegetables.
• The Bloomer 2 has plant-centric lighting specs and a special spectrum.
• The IKEA Växer is larger is size and the Bloomer 2 is more compact and powerful with 63 umol/m2/s @ 20cm distance.

Plant-centric
HortiPower Bloomer 2 is made for plants with its plant-centric lighting specs on the package such as 19 umol/s. IKEA Växer does not mention specific plant-centric lighting specs. Our own research indicates 12 umol/s. This means you will get 58% more plant-centric light with HortiPower.

The spectrum of the IKEA Växer seems to contain a large portion of green light, which is relatively less relevant for plants. It’s red LEDs seem to be regular LEDs at 630nm. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 contains a large portion of special plant-centric red light, which is very important for photosynthesis and plant health.

The IKEA Växer is relatively large. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 is 25mm more compact and 1w more powerful which gives you more options to install.

The IKEA Växer is made for living room plants. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 can also grow herbs, leafy greens, flowers, berries and seedlings for fruiting vegetables.

Plants have a different sensitivity to colours of light than the human eye. For the human eye we measure the brightness of a bulb in lumens. The intensity of plant lighting is expressed in PAR Photosynthetic Active Radiation. This PAR range contains a wide range of ‘light color’ which we call spectrum that the plant needs in order grow well.

Plant-centric light output comparison

Seedlings and young plants need relatively less plant-centric light compared to e.g. adult plants. And light-loving crops such as tomato, cucumber and bell pepper need a lot more light than e.g. leafy greens such as lettuce, rucola and so forth. Placing the bulb as close as possible to the plant will help you to increase the light intensity on the plant, but the most important metric is to look at the amount of plant-centric light that comes out of a bulb.

The IKEA Växer does not reveal on its website how much plant-centric light is emitted. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 emits 19 umol/s and at 20cm distance the plant may receive 63 umol/m2/s. This is perfect for flowers, succulents, foliage plants, plant propagation and even strawberry cultivation.

Spectrum comparison

The IKEA Växer says this bulb has a colour spectrum with ‘more blue and red tones’ compared to a regular source. The bulb contains white LEDs and red LEDs. The red LEDs seem to regular red LEDs which are used in RGB light sources. This results in about 21.4% of red light. The spectrum peaks at 630nm and effectively runs from 400-630nm. The spectrum contains a large portion of green with up to 73% green. Whilst green is also part of the plant-spectrum it is not the most important color for plants. 

The HortiPower Bloomer 2 contains white LEDs and special red plant-centric LEDs. The special plant-centric red helps the photosynthesis of the plants and therefore it will grow better and healthier compared to normal red LEDs that are optimized for the human-eye. The spectrum contains a large portion of red with up to 54% red. This ratio of red is double the amount of IKEA. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 spectrum runs from 400-700nm.

The bulbs can both be installed into an E27 compatible fitting. The Växer dimensions is quite big with 115 x 95 mm. The Bloomer 2 has a much compacter diameter with 133 x 70 mm. This means that the more powerful Bloomer 2 can fit into both large and small light fittings. This gives you more freedom to choose the lighting fixture you like.

Luminous flux

The Ikea Växer has 800lm output. This is the brightness for the human eye. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 has 750lm output. The brightness for the human eye is similar, with Växer slightly more bright, note that for plant-centric light the PAR is more important than lumen.

The energy consumption is similar with the Växer using 10 watts and the Bloomer 2 is using 9 watts (this used to be 11 watts, but with new R&D the Bloomer 2 is more efficient than before 2023).

The color temperature tells us the how cool or how warm the light appears. The Växer is 4000K and the Bloomer 2 is also 4500K. Please note CCT is a quality of light metric for people. The Boomer 2 will appear a bit pink or white rose depending on which time of the day you look at it. 

The switching cycle determines how often the lights can be switched on and off. The Växer has 25.000 switching cycles and the Bloomer 2 has 15.000. If the lights are switched on every day the Växer can turn on 25.000/2/365=34 years. Whereas the Bloomer can switch on 15.000/2/365=20 years.

Both lamps have a lifetime of 25.000h which results in a possible lifetime of 25.000/10/365=6.8 years under optimal circumstances. In practice these lamps will continue to do well for at least 2 years before there light output starts to degrade a bit.

Both lights are officially not dimmable. But the Bloomer 2 can work with LED dimmers from major brands such as Scheider Electric and others and can reduce its brightness from 100% to 20%. You probably would want to use a timeswitch to simulate day/ night.

The mercury content for both bulbs is zero. In fact all LEDs should have zero mercury.

The Power factor for Växer is 0.7 and for Bloomer 2 it is 0.8. This means that the Bloomer 2 is more efficient in generating light.

The Lumen maintenance factor is 70% for both bulbs. This is following the EU regulation to indicate lifetime with a L70 maintenance factor.

The IKEA Växer is made to maintain healthy living room plants. Foliage plants would be able to do well under these lights. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 can also grow herbs, leafy greens, succulents, flowers, berries and seedlings for fruiting vegetables. This is mainly due to a larger light intensity and specific plant-centric light. The HortiPower Bloomer 2 can also act as a flowering inducer or flowering regulator for long-day plants and short-day plants.

The HortiPower Bloomer 2 is available in Europe since February 2022.