so ive been studying up on cfl's for a minute now and it seems to me that the only problem is light penetration. if cfs have enough power to only penetrate 12 to 24 inches into the canopy, then why doesn't anybody place bulbs all around or even even straight through/underneath the plants to hit the dark spots? i've seen it multiple times where the plants have been straight up touching the cfl bulbs/tubes and there was no light burn damage what so ever, so i dont see why this theory would be a bad idea...

i have the idea of building a 'light cage' of cfls for my plants so that light surrounds the plants completely on all sides instead of just relying on white reflective walls. will the fan leaves still absorb light even if its coming from the underside or will this 'light cage' idea make the plants grow all funky and deformed?

cfl's aren't powerful enough to penetrate the canopy. Well some light does penetrate but pretty much no usable light. CFL has a max distance it can be away from a plant of 12". if a cfl is more than 12" away from the canopy the usable light should be considered 0. this applies to 42, 26,23 etc bulbs, not sure of the larger cfl's. Light is absorbed from the top part of the leaf.

A all around light cage to hit the canopy on all 5 sides would work, but it would probably be more efficient to do a scrog and focus all the light on a flat canopy rather than scattered light all around the plant.

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Dial into your plant's needs. Don't work to keep your plant alive, make it work to stay alive.

That's an interesting idea and I'd be curious how it works out. I use CFL's but prefer to use them in a SCROG grow. This arrangement really plays to the strength of CLF's. Simply keep the foliage below the screen trimmed off and let the CFL's do their magic above the screen. Since you can get the bulbs nice and close growth is very impressive. If I were growing in a conventional manner I think I would stick with conventional lighting (MH & HPS). If you do go forward with the CFL Cage idea please post the results. Thanks!