Make your own DIY plant wall with lights | 5 tips

Plant wall with greenery and green plants
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Creating your own DIY plant wall with lights can add a breath of fresh air to any room, while giving your green friends the light they need to thrive. Here are five tips to get you started: Firstly, choose the right plants that thrive in your home environment. Make sure to install quality grow lights that mimic natural sunlight. Design your plant wall to be not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing. Consider the use of automatic watering systems to ensure consistent humidity. Last but not least, plan the maintenance of your green wall to ensure its longevity and beauty over time. By following these tips, you can enjoy a vibrant and luminous green wall that enhances both your home and your wellbeing.

How to get started with your DIY green wall

We've all been told since primary school that plants thrive on light. When it comes to building your own DIY plant wall, light is just one of the many important things to consider. First and foremost, there are a lot of things to consider before you even start building. 

How exactly should your green wall work?

There are almost as many possibilities as your imagination can come up with. Before you start shopping for and building your DIY green wall, it's important that you consider all the details first, here in this article we'll try to guide you through many of the things you should consider. Including some of the benefits of different types of green walls.

Types of plant wicks

There are several different types of plant wicks that are based on different irrigation principles, we will go through the most common types below.

Hydroponic DIY plant wall

Hydroponic Growing plants is one of our absolute passions here at plantelys.dk, in addition to lights for plants.
A big advantage of building your indoor plant wall as a hydroponic plant wall is that you don't need to use soil. "But how can you grow plants without soil..." - you might be thinking, it's actually not as difficult as it sounds. To understand how to grow plants without soil, it's important to first understand the role of soil in plant growth. 

One of the most important roles of the soil/mulch is, firstly, to hold water for the plants. The soil therefore stores water, which the plant can then absorb through it capillary effect of roots. Secondly, the main function of soil is to store fertiliser and nutrients for plants. The soil itself does not contribute to plant growth, it is merely a medium for the roots, which then contain the things that are actually necessary for plants to grow, i.e. water and fertiliser.

Since the soil is not in itself necessary, we can easily replace it with something else, if only we have a way to convey water and nutrition to the roots. The smartest way to do this is by hydroponic cultivation.

 

Create your own DIY plant wall with light hydroponic cultivation

When you grow plants hydroponically, you replace all your soil with water. This means you only need water and fertiliser. There are several advantages to this. For example, you don't need to water your plants as often, as they have plenty of water and fertiliser in their container now that the water doesn't have to share space with the soil. Another big advantage is hygiene. When you don't drag soil from outside into your house for your plants, you greatly reduce the risk of your plants contracting diseases or insect infections that may have been hiding in the soil. So there's far less maintenance required with a hydroponic DIY plant wall. 

See our equipment for hydroponic cultivation

Growing in plant fibre

An alternative to hydroponic and soil-based plant walls is to grow plants in plant fibre, such as coconut fibre, hemp fibre, wood fibre or similar material. Some even choose to use rock wool, for example. 

The catch for all these materials is that they do not contain any nutrients in themselves, but the nutrients the plants need are supplied via the irrigation water.

The fibre material only serves to retain the plant and moisture around the roots.

Soil-based DIY plant wall

The earth-based plant wall is probably the most common type of plant wall, and there are many good reasons for this. Soil-based plant wicks are very user-friendly. Caring for and maintaining a homemade soil plant wall is just like looking after your potted plant, but on a slightly larger scale. 

Soil also has the advantage that the vast majority of plants are able to grow in it, after all that is what they do in nature. There are some plants that have problems being grown aero- or hydroponically, but you will not encounter these problems if you choose to make a traditional soil DIY plant wall.

DIY plant wall for the home or office
 
As with the hydroponic and the aeroponic, it is important that you remember to fertilize your plants.
See Plantelys.dk's large selection of plant fertilizers

Lighting for DIY plant wall

FloristAs we mentioned earlier, good lighting is very important for healthy plants. Normally when trying to grow a potted plant, the easiest way to ensure good lighting is to place it in a window sill facing the sun. However, this is very difficult when you're dealing with a plant wall, as it's not easy to move around. The best way to mount your DIY plant wall so that it doesn't touch the floor is by screwing/bolting it to the wall, that way it's stable on the wall, ensuring that it doesn't fall down and spill water/soil on your floor if someone accidentally walks into it.

However, the wall that you intend to turn into a plant wall is not always the wall in your house that gets the most natural light.

It's not a problem!
Do you have a wall in your living room that you think would make a fantastic contribution to your interior design if you transformed it into a plant wall? But unfortunately it's sheltered from the sun? Then you can easily supplement your plants with artificial grow lights. Here at Plantelys.dk we are experts in artificial LED grow light for plant growth.

 

The benefits of using LED grow lights instead of conventional grow lights are many, which is why we only sell lights that are built around LED technology. LED lights use far less power than conventional ones, making them better for your electricity bill and the environment. In addition to the lower power consumption, they also produce less heat, which is better for your indoor climate! In addition, LED lights are also much more durable and can therefore last many more years than conventional lights before they need to be replaced, another win for the environment!

You can read more about grow lights here on this blog post

Why build a DIY plant wall at all?

There are many advantages to dedicating an entire wall to plants in your home or office area. Among other things shows research that the indoor environment in your room will be much better, on several points. The primary point is the indoor environment itself, i.e. the air quality, a plant wall is really good at cleaning your air and making the room better to breathe in. Furthermore, a plant wall also helps the acoustics in a room, this includes both less reverberation , but also just a lower general sound level.
 

A study from the University of Southern Denmark also shows that on hot days, a plant wall of a certain size can lower the temperature in a room, perhaps your living room or office, by up to 2 degrees! A DIY plant wall therefore makes a noticeable difference in how nice it is to be in the room on the hottest summer days. 

But it is not only the physical conditions in the room that a DIY plant wall can improve. It is also shown that there is one great mental advantage by having a plant wall. After all, we humans are made by nature to be outside, in the forest, on the plains and in the jungle, but we don't think much about this when we sit inside our comfortable and climate-controlled concrete boxes. 

But many people's subconscious suffers without nature. However, this can be helped with a plant wall. A plant wall can indeed reduce both stress, anxiety, overwhelm and fatigue/freshness. It is therefore almost a miracle how much a little bit of green in our home, or at our workplace, can improve our lives!

What kind of plants can you have in a DIY plant wall? | Tip 5 - Plants

With the choice of plants for your DIY plant wall, it's almost only the imagination that sets the limits, i.e. within reasonable limits of course, it's not because you can just start growing oak trees and coconuts, but there are still a lot of options !!

For example, you can grow a mixture of different ornamental plants in your DIY plant wall, perhaps succulents, ferns or something else entirely? In any case, it is the type of plants that are usually found in professionally produced plant beds, as all the plants are very green. But if you would like to be a little extra creative with your personal DIY plant wall, you can fill it up with some more useful plants, perhaps some useful plants or a collection of different herbs, so that you are always ready for cooking? You can find our range of plant and herb seeds for your DIY plant wall here

If you need help or want to know more about plant lights and plant walls, you are more than welcome to contact our team of experts here