GE Grow Lights

We have not tested these lights. We own none of them and have measured none of them. What follows is the specification GE publishes, collected in one place, our own arithmetic run on top of it, and an explicit list of what GE leaves out.

GE Grow is a line of screw-in bulbs and plug-in fixtures sold through the same hardware-store and online channels as the rest of GE's household lighting. It is aimed squarely at the reader of this site: someone with a shelf of seedlings, a pot of herbs or a houseplant that sulks through winter, who would rather buy a bulb from a name they recognize than a panel from a brand they have never heard of.

What GE publishes, and what it does not

Most lighting brands that move into grow lights bring the paperwork of household lighting with them: watts, lumens, an equivalent-wattage claim and a color temperature. GE does something better. Every GE Grow product page we read states a PPF, the number of photons the light emits each second, in micromoles per second.

That is a real distinction. Among the brands on this site, a published PPF is the exception at the budget end of the market. It is the one figure that cannot be reconstructed from anything else on a box, and GE states it even on its least expensive bulbs.

The whole range, by GE's own numbers

Three things stand out. First, the efficacy band is narrow: 1.56 to 1.80 µmol/J across seven products and five form factors. That places the whole range in the middle of this site's table, well clear of the SuncoGrow 40 W at 1.21 and the Soltech Aspect at 1.39, and well short of the LED boards at 2.3 to 2.75. The full ranking is in most efficient grow lights by µmol/J.

Second, the two integrated fixtures both publish 2000 lumens, and one emits 52 µmol/s while the other emits 72. Identical lumens, a 38% difference in photons. There is no cleaner demonstration from a single manufacturer that lumens cannot be converted into plant light: lumens are weighted by the sensitivity of the human eye, and two spectra can look equally bright to you while delivering very different photon counts to a leaf.

Third, the Flowers and Fruit versions never publish more photons than their Seeds and Greens counterparts, and they always carry a lower color rendering index. More on what that means further down.

One small warning about GE's spec tables: they list bulb diameters of 94 and 122 under an inches label, which cannot be right for bulbs that fit a household lamp. We quote no bulb dimensions for that reason.

Why two of the best numbers are not picks

The 24 in fixture has the highest efficacy and the most photons per foot in the range, and the PAR38 is GE's brightest single bulb. When we checked Amazon's catalog on September 17, 2026, the 24 in fixture and both PAR38 variants were listed as currently unavailable. This site only recommends products you can actually buy, so they appear in the table above and nowhere in the picks. If either returns, the arithmetic below applies to it in exactly the same way.

The PPFD question GE does not answer

People search for the PPFD of GE grow lights because PPFD is the figure plant guidance is written in, and GE does not publish one for any product we checked. What GE does publish is a hanging distance: 6 to 9 inches for the BR30, 9 inches for the A19, 24 to 30 inches for the PAR38, and 6 to 12 inches for the 24 in fixture.

A distance and a PPF are not enough to produce a PPFD. The missing ingredient is the beam angle, which decides how widely those photons spread before they land. The same 16 µmol/s poured into a narrow cone and a wide one produces very different intensity at 9 inches, and GE publishes the angle for neither bulb. So any specific PPFD figure you see quoted for a GE bulb was either measured by someone with a meter or made up. What arithmetic can do honestly is set bounds and area averages, which is what the next two sections do. The underlying quantities are explained in PAR, PPFD and DLI explained, and the general case for placement is in how far a grow light should be from plants.

The 48 in fixture on a shelf

A 4 ft fixture over a 4 ft shelf about a foot deep is the setup most seed starters actually build, so that is the area we use, with the same 0.8 uniformity factor applied to every bar on this site.

112 µmol/m²/s sits in the low band, 50 to 150, on the University of Minnesota Extension's scale. That suits foliage houseplants on a shelf. It does not suit seedlings: the University of New Hampshire Extension puts them at roughly 12 mol/m²/day, and one fixture delivers about half that even at GE's 18 hours.

Two per shelf is the configuration to buy for seedlings. It is worth setting beside the other 4 ft light on this site that publishes a PPF. One SuncoGrow 40 W strip averages about 104 µmol/m²/s over the same run while drawing 40 W; one GE fixture averages about 112 while drawing 30. Both numbers come from the manufacturers' own PPF figures run through identical arithmetic, so the comparison is fair, and it favors GE on light and on the electricity bill.

The BR30 on one plant

A bulb has no natural footprint the way a 4 ft bar does, and without a beam angle we cannot compute its spread. What we can compute is a ceiling: the average intensity if every photon the bulb emits landed inside one square foot. No bulb achieves that, so the real figure is always lower.

Even under an assumption that flatters it, a single GE bulb lands just inside the medium band and short of a seedling's daily target. That makes it a light for one plant that is content with low to medium light — a pothos, a philodendron, a snake plant — placed close, as GE says, at 6 to 9 inches. It is not a light for a seed tray, and it is nowhere near enough for a plant that wants the high band, such as an indoor citrus tree. Typical targets by plant are collected in PPFD targets by plant type.

BR30 or A19

GE publishes identical figures for the two Seeds and Greens bulbs: 9 W, 16 µmol/s, 500 lumens, CRI 90. The difference is the shape. A BR30 is a reflector flood that pushes its output forward, which is what you want in a lamp aimed down at a plant. An A19 is the ordinary household bulb shape and sends light out in every direction, so in an open socket more of its output lights the ceiling and the wall. Buy the BR30 if your lamp takes one. Buy the A19 only when it will not: a table lamp with a narrow harp, or a pendant designed around a standard bulb.

About GE's 18 hours

Every GE page we read that gives a schedule gives the same one: leave the light on for 18 hours a day. For seedlings that sits at the top of the University of Minnesota Extension's 16 to 18 hour guidance. For houseplants and herbs it runs past Iowa State University Extension's general advice of 12 to 14 hours with a 16 hour ceiling. We would run seedlings at 16 and follow the plant-specific figures in grow light hours per day by plant for everything else. The electricity difference is trivial either way.

Seeds and Greens or Flowers and Fruit

GE sells each shape in two spectra and describes the Flowers and Fruit version as having an advanced red spectrum for plants in their flowering or fruiting stage. GE publishes no spectral distribution for either, so that claim cannot be checked against anything. What can be checked is GE's own photon count. On the BR30, Flowers and Fruit emits 15 µmol/s against 16 for Seeds and Greens at the same 9 W. On the PAR38 both emit 50, with Flowers and Fruit drawing 2 W less.

The consistent difference is color rendering: CRI 60 against 90 on the BR30, 70 against 80 on the PAR38. CRI describes how natural colors look to you under the light, not what the plant receives, but in a living room it is the difference between a plant that looks green and one that looks faintly off. For herbs, greens, seedlings and houseplants, which is nearly everything readers here are growing, we would buy Seeds and Greens. The research on white light against blue-plus-red is summarized in full spectrum versus red and blue.

Who should buy which

• Two 48 in fixtures per shelf for seedlings. The arithmetic lands above the seedling target at 16 hours, and GE's published PPF is what lets you know that before ordering.
• One 48 in fixture for a shelf of foliage houseplants, where the low band is the right target rather than a shortfall.
• A BR30 for a single low- or medium-light plant under a lamp you already own, placed close.
• An A19 only when the lamp will not take a BR30.
• None of them for a plant that needs high light, or if photons per watt decide the purchase. At 1.73 to 1.78 µmol/J you get roughly two-thirds of the light per watt that a good LED board delivers.

What GE does not publish

For every product we checked: no PPFD at any distance, no beam angle, no color temperature, no spectral distribution and no efficacy figure. The absence of a beam angle matters most, because it is the one number that would turn GE's hanging distances into intensities. Against that, GE publishes more than most mainstream competitors: a PPF and a CRI on every product we checked, and on most of them a hanging distance and a daily schedule. That is enough to size a shelf honestly, and it is why this range can be recommended on arithmetic rather than on the name on the box.