Don't Paint It Green

If you're thinking of giving your growing area a bit of a face lift some time soon, can I give you some advice: Don't paint it green. As you can see from this approximation of the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll 'a' (it shows how much of each colour the plant can use), plants use hardly any green light, tending to use light from the blue and red ends of the spectrum for photosynthesis.

I remember thinking it such a good idea to paint my rear porch green, only to discover much later this was why the plants weren't prospering - not the poor season which subsequently followed. It never occurred to me that plants are not really green: they only appear green because the chlorophyll (and other pigments) has absorbed all the other colours from the visible spectrum, leaving just the green light (or whatever an object appears to be) to be reflected to our eyes.

I find white the best colour for a growing room, especially this time of year when plants benefit from as much reflected light as possible. You can even use tin foil in the winter, though it tends to be too much when the sun gets stronger. Like we humans, plants can also suffer sunburn.