New room, need lighting help

Getting back into growing now that I finally finished my new grow room. DIY LED's are big now and I'm all about building myself, but I just cannot wrap my head around what I need right now. I need to cover an area roughly 5ftx7ft and would like to be able to use the same light for veg and bloom. I've watched quite a few videos about putting them together but just can't figure out exactly what I need. Please help a struggling guy out, I want my plants to thrive!

Ok, so the first step would be go on youtube and watch growmau5 's 7 part tutorial on the basics , that will help you understand the drivers, heatsinks, voltages of LED ect.

Then go google LEDgardener's strip builds, that will give you a huge amount of examples for different spaces.
Of course you don't have to go with strips, you can use boards or COBs too, the basics apply the same.

LEDs-Heatsink-Driver.

Most these days run about 30-35w per square foot.
Once you've got your head around the basics there's plenty of people who will help you match and source parts on here.

Thanks, I will have to check out more vids. The ledgardener site I checked out for a while and it's what finally made me just ask what I need, I have no idea the watts per square foot I need or details like that. I'll check out the videos first and try to get a better grip before checking the ledgardener again then, thanks

Definitely start with the growmau5 videos.

So I watched through the videos and I feel a little less dumb, but not much lol. Still not sure as to the amount of COBs or lights that I'll need for the space or how many K they should be, etc. I'm sure I could figure out the drivers and heatsinks, I know I can order parts and put things together, but I'd love some suggestions.

Best start with complete info: what height do you have and whats your cooling method(ac/vented) and whats your dominating climate (hot/cold?)

Lighting can many times be decided by form factor (4' strips for 4-5' spacce ettc)

Cob fixtures tend to get heavy from large heatsinks, pcb/strips/boards is the way to go imho.

My advice on that space, it being first time and all is to not over complicate but to have a chance to upgrade: 6-8 Fotop boards (search the forum for moflows thread on these) should do the trick, around 1000-1200w. 2 sections of 3-4 boards wide. No heat sink needed.

Disclaimer: this build only works if you have decent access to all sides/corners for raising and lowering the lights.
There are many other possible builds but they involve much more components: much more extra work and troubles to isolate problem in case you have wiring issues.

Thanks for the quick reply. Hight isn't a factor, the room has ceilings about 8'6", and i will have access to all sides/corners of the lights. It's a hidden room so I kept A/C in and out out of the room. I have it ventilated through in-line fans in and out of the room (should be plenty of ventilation). With the current older LED lights I'm running the temps are about perfect. Technically I'm trying to upgrade with these diy lights, plus cover more area as the 2 lights I'm currently running (one is a Kind one is something else, not sure I'm not home at the minute and they are about a decade old) don't cover near enough space (upgraded from literally 2 halves of a closet, each side 2'x3' so definitely have more space to work with now). I'll start searching for info on the fotop boards.

Try wsws:

Or this thread:

I've been browsing both of these, lots of good stuff! I'll keep cruising info for a while.