I wouldn't let the plants touch a SS light, it gets pretty hot. While they're still in veg is the time to train or creatively prune to get more space. YMMV...


SME

My experience with newer LED grow lights for flowering and CFL's (1600 lumens 6500K) for vegging is if you are looking at older information, you are going to get burned. My specs for the LED light I use says it covers 2ft.x3ft. at 2ft. above canopy. But I was getting some leaf tip burn and had to back off a little. You can hit plants harder during flowering than you need during vegging. 23-26 Watt CFL's (usually they say 100 Watt equivalent) in one of those cheap round clamp-on metal reflectors will fry your plants if they get too much also. 6500k 1600 lumens for vegging, 2700k 1600 lumens to assist flowering. Amount of air moving/ temperature/humidity have some influence. You can get closer when flowering with these also, but make gradual changes. Plants that are getting cooked curl under badly, quickly,(looks similar to too much nitrogen) sometimes they recover, but it will take a few weeks. Sometimes they stay pretty sick, because they got weak and susceptible to other problems(mildew). These CFL's in a reflector cover a square foot pretty well.