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Bulb, bar, panel or gooseneck
The right format is the one that matches the furniture. Wattage comes after that.
Bulb in a lamp you already own
An E27 (screw) or B22 (bayonet) LED grow bulb turns a lamp you have into a plant light, for one or two pots. It looks like a lamp, which matters in a living room. The constraints are the fitting and the shade.
Most grow bulbs on Amazon UK are E27. Many British lamps are still bayonet. An adapter does not fix a closed shade: the bulb needs air. Fitting details are in E27 and B22.
A 15 W class bulb is the usual single-plant top-up. A 40 W class bulb is a lot of light in a small shade and is charted further from the leaves. Compare stated specs in the shortlist.
Bar on a shelf or in a cabinet
A T5-style LED bar is a long, slim fitting. It suits a 60 cm shelf, a bookcase, or a glass cabinet, because the light runs along the plants instead of sitting in a pool under one bulb. Bars often daisy-chain so two shelves can share a plug. They also run cooler than a bulb of the same light, which is why they are the default inside a closed cabinet.
Measure the interior before you order. The bar, including end caps, needs to be shorter than the shelf so the lead can turn. Cabinet heat, cables and rental drilling rules are in lights for shelves and cabinets.
Small panel
A panel is a flat board of LEDs, usually hung. It covers a deeper bench more evenly than one bar, and it looks more like a piece of kit. That is a virtue over a propagation bench and a drawback over the sofa.
Houseplant use stops at the compact end. A 70 W panel for a wide shelf is still a domestic object. A 300 W commercial bar, or anything sold as a tent kit, is a different hobby. Those systems, and their running costs, belong with Hydroponics Guide.
Gooseneck
A clip-on gooseneck aims at one pot on a desk. Coverage is small on purpose. Some include a timer in the head, which means you should not add another timer on the socket. The hours page explains that with a specific maker note.
A gooseneck will not rescue a shelf of plants. If the "one plant" becomes five, change format rather than buying five clips.
A quick match
- One plant, lamp already there: bulb.
- One plant, no lamp: gooseneck, or a bulb in a cheap open holder.
- Shelf or cabinet: bar.
- Seed tray or a deep bench: bar or a small panel.
- Tent, flowering fruit crops, high wattage: not this site.
The shelf tool uses your width, depth, headroom and budget and returns one of these four, with an indicative distance and a rough daily cost. White versus purple light, which decides whether you can stand to look at it, is in full spectrum and blurple.