When you’re growing with artificial lighting, it’s important to protect your eyes with grow room glasses.
Much like sunglasses, grow room glasses act as a shield from harmful wavelengths emitted by lights. Along with protecting your eyes, these glasses reduce glare, fix discoloration, and allow you to better see your growing area.
Unlike sunglasses, these types of glasses are specifically made for the types of lights used in grow rooms. Lenses exist to protect your eyes from LED, HPS, and CMH lighting systems. Selecting the right lenses for your growing operation is key for proper eye protection and grow room work.
These glasses come in a variety of shapes and styles.
There are a lot of different products out there, and it can be hard to choose a pair for use in your grow room. The following information will help you select a pair that is right for you and your situation. Some factors to consider when choosing a pair are the frame material, lens compatibility with lighting system, and lens ability to protect from harmful light.
The following information will also introduce you to highly rated Hydrospecs line of grow room glasses.
Why Do You Need to Protect Your Eyes?
You may be wondering why you should even buy specific eye protection for grow room use. While some people might suggest using quality sunglasses to protect your eyes from grow room light, this is not recommended. Grow room glasses are designed to protect against the exact type of light you are using.
There are different types of lighting used in grow rooms. These include light-emitting diode or LED grow lights, high pressure sodium grow lights (HPS), and ceramic metal halide grow lights (CMH). All of these types of lights are available through Global Garden.
Artificial grow room lights provide light in a specific spectrum range or ranges. While natural sunlight provides a broad spectrum of light, grow room lights provide a narrower spectrum of the light. This lighting is great for specific stages of plant development, but it can be more harmful to human eyes.
Human eyes are used to seeing the world through a complete spectrum of light. When light is only in a small range of the spectrum, our eyes have a hard time focusing. A proper pair of glasses helps correct this so we can see the world in full detail.
What Happens if You Don’t Wear Grow Room Glasses?
According to the American Optometric Association, UV light can cause a variety of harmful effects. Some of these are short-term effects, and others are more serious long-term consequences.
Exposure for short periods of time can cause eye sunburn known as photokeratitis. Symptoms include redness, pain, tearing up, and a gritty feeling in the eye.
Longer term exposure can increase the risk of developing serious eye issues. One serious issue is macular degeneration. This condition occurs when a part of the retina degrades. It can severely impact vision.
Another serious eye issue caused by exposure to UV light is cataracts. Cataracts occur when the lens of the eye becomes foggy. This leads to vision loss and even blindness. Fortunately, cataracts can be removed.
While both macular degeneration and cataracts typically occur in older individuals, they can occur in younger people after prolonged light exposure. So, be sure to wear proper eye protection when working in grow rooms.
Types of UV Light
UV light is classified by its wavelength. The wavelengths of UV light are shorter than those of visible light, but longer than those of of X-rays.
UV light is separated by wavelength into three main categories: UVA, UVB, and UVC. According to the World Health Organization, UVC light has the shortest wavelength. It is also the most harmful to humans. UVB light has a medium wavelength, and UVC light has the longest wavelength of UV light. Both UVA and UVB light can cause sunburn, damage to eyes, and skin cancer.
Grow Room Glasses HPS
The glasses protect your eyes from high pressure sodium (HPS) lighting. HPS lighting emits light that is largely in the yellow and red parts of the spectrum. Although HPS lights contain smaller amounts of blue and UV light than other types of lighting, they can still damage your eyes.
The narrow range of the lighting spectrum makes it hard for your eyes to focus. It can also make it hard to detect movement, which can lead to you missing small pests on your plants. Furthermore, this narrow range casts plants in a golden glow. This makes it difficult to spot discoloration caused by disease or nutrient deficiency.
To protect your eyes from HPS lights, choose a pair of glasses that have lenses specifically meant for HPS lights. These lenses will not only protect your eyes, but they will also allow you to see your grow room area in true color. This allows you to better see details and spot problems.
Best Grow LED Room Glasses
Light Emitting Diode (LED) lights are made up of many small chips that produce a specific range of color. These chips are combined to emit the ranges of color of your choice.
Many LED lights have a combination of red and blue diodes to facilitate different stages of plant development. Even with these combinations of light colors, LED lights do not produce a complete spectrum of light. Therefore, your eyes have a hard time focusing and seeing movement.
As with HPS glasses, LED grow room glasses protect your eyes from harm. They also allow you to see the true colors of the plants and the rest of your grow room. This allows you to see details and detect disease and nutrients deficiencies in your crop.
The best LED grow room glasses will protect your eyes from UVA, UVB, and UVC rays.
Best Grow Room Glasses
A number of factors are important to consider when determining the best grow room glasses. They include the following:
- Frame fit
- Frame material
- Protection from harmful light
- Lens ability to correct color
- Lens compatibility with lighting system
Frame Fit
It’s important that frames fit your face or you will face discomfort when wearing them. Different glasses are made for different head sizes. Choosing the right size will allow for a good fit.
Features such as rubber nose pieces increase user comfort. Smooth temples allow for comfort on the users’ ears.
It’s also important that glasses stay on the user’s nose without sliding down. Rubber nose pieces help hold the glasses in place.
Frame Material
Most grow room glasses frames are made out of plastic. Rigid, high-quality plastic allows frames to resist damage and breaks.
Avoid cheap plastic as well as plastic or metal with sharp pieces.
Lens Protection from Harmful Light
Perhaps the most important factor of the best grow room glasses is how well the lenses protect the user from harmful light. Light in the blue spectrum and UV light are the most harmful forms of light.
Quality lenses protect eyes from this light. This limits the strain that grow lights have on a user’s eyes. It also protects eyes from burns and limits damages to retinas. If lenses are not high quality, users will be exposed to dangerous wavelengths of light. This can lead to serious conditions such as macular degeneration and cataracts.
The best lenses will protect your eyes from UVA, UVB, and UVC light.
UV light, and protection from it, cannot be felt by human eyes. Retinas do not have nerves, so humans cannot feel when their eyes are experiencing harmful light.
Thankfully, a number of measures and labels let users know about the quality of grow room glasses lenses. Lens protections are often measured using wavelength and optical density (OD).
The wavelength is the range of light emitted from a source. Light with less energy has a lower wavelength. Light with more energy has a higher wavelength. Blue light has a low wavelength range, while red light has a high range.
Optical density is a measurement of a lens’ transmission of a certain wavelength or range of wavelengths. Optical density is a logarithmic function. Therefore, an OD of 6 corresponds to 0.000001% light transmission.
In other words, the higher the OD, the more light the lens blocks.
Another measure of lens quality is an ANSI Z87 safety rating. This rating, assigned by the American National Standards Institute, is a mark of high-quality safety glasses.
Lens Ability to Correct Color
Grow lights often distort the color of your grow room. For example, LED lights may cast your plants in a purple glow. This monotone color can make it difficult to see plant details. The ability to view details is key to detecting plant diseases, pests, and nutrient deficiencies.
Quality glasses will correct the color to that present under natural lighting. This allows you to keep track of your plants and spot any issues in their beginning stages.
Lens Compatibility with Lighting System
Different lenses are compatible with different types of lights. The glasses available through Global Garden are available with lenses designed for HPS, MH, or CMH lights.
Lenses meant for specific types of lighting systems are meant for the specific wavelength spectrums used in these systems. These lenses will protect eyes from these wavelengths as well as correct discoloration.
Hydrospecs
Hydrospecs has a history of providing top-quality safety glasses to the welding, laser, and glass-working industries. Their grow glasses are of the same high quality, making them some of the best grow room glasses around.
All styles of Hydrospecs glasses are available with lenses suited for use with HPS, LED, or CMH lights. This ensures that your eyes will be protected from the type of lighting you are using.
These specifically tailored lenses also correct the discoloration caused by lights. Since each type of light produces different wavelengths and colors, it’s important to choose a lens specifically made for that type of light.
With Hydrospecs lenses, your grow room lighting will be corrected. No more seeing your grow room washed in purple or yellow! These corrective lenses also allow you to see the details of your grow room and keep your plants healthy.
All Hydrospecs glasses focus on comfort with features such as rubber nose pieces and smooth plastic frames. This allows for a good fit and increased breathability.
Hydrospecs lenses provide a great level of protection from light. Optical density ratings range from 5+ to 7+. These means your eyes are protected from at least 99.999% of harmful light.
All Hydrospecs grow room glasses also come with an ANSI Z87 safety rating. This ensures that they meet national regulations for safety glasses.
Grow Room Glasses Review
Our research shows that users have largely positive experiences with Hydrospecs glasses. The frames fit comfortably on users’ faces without pinching their nose nor sliding down. They did not cause any painful pressure behind the ears nor against the nose.
The lenses corrected the color of the grow room so it looked like it was under natural lighting. Wearers reported that lenses were well-tailored to the type of grow light they were meant to be used in conjunction with. This allowed for observations of minor plant discoloration.
Although there is no noticeable effect of the protection from harmful light, the OD score indicates the lenses were protecting the user’s eyes. The ANSI Z87 safety rating also provided the user with a sense of security.
Which Grow Room Glasses to Choose?
You now know the importance of wearing eye protection when working in the grow room. Grow room glasses protect eyes from harmful light and prevent both minor and major eye damage. These glasses also allow you to see details, detect movement, and avoid eye stress.
A number of factors are important when choosing quality grow room glasses. These include frame fit, frame material, lens quality, and lens type. High-quality lenses will provide an OD score as well as additional safety ratings.
When choosing a pair of glasses, make sure to choose lenses that correspond with the type of lights you are using. This will not only protect your eyes, but also correct discoloration caused by lights.
Hydrospecs are a great choice when buying grow room glasses. They provide all the benefits I went over above, allowing you to work in a grow room knowing your eyes are protected and you’re able to see all that is happening with your plants.