Looking to start growing indoors...

Been a pot smoker for over 15 years now and I've decided to try growing my own. Going to order some seeds online, making a home made deep water system, but I'm stuck on lighting. I was told LED lighting is great for cost but now I'm reading they arent as good as other lights. I want to grow some really good plants (only about 4 or so just for personal use.) Lighting seems to be the expensive part so I would like to get the right setup.

In Vegetative stage its 2 red to 1 blue?

Flowering is 3 red to 1 blue?

Then now I'm reading that you need white as well.

How do I figure out what I'll need? It's only going to be 4 plants (Indica) so I'm figuring I will need around 4ft x 4ft to cover the top of the tub carrying the baskets?

I've searched the web on this alot but I keep coming up with contradictive opinions. I would like to avoid doubling my electric bill to grow my own stash. If it's that expensive, I can just keep buying it from the guy down the street.

T5 fluorescents homie

2blue to one red veg
2 red 1 blue flower

if you get some t5 lights go talk to valle grwon? undercovercop, or altarnation these are users on this site that know thier shit about T5 lights

for a 4x4 your gonna need a 6-8 bulb unit

I've been using T5 florecent lighting for two grows now with great sucess. 2FT two bulbs 6500K for veg and 3000K for bloom. Cost for light fixture approx $70 to $90 depending on where you buy.
Uses only 44 watts electricity. I use GH 3 part Flora nutes and maintain PH 5.8. Good luck with your first grow, have patients

I did good using t5 for veg stage but I got small yield when I used it for flowering.
I have seen some really good pics of others that used t5's but I guess i was a noob and didn't have a good yield until i upgraded to a 400 watt mh/hps switchable ballast.
4 plants under a 400 watt light raise my light bill about $40.00 a month and after a 3 month grow $120.00 bill turns into 4 months of personal smoke.

Of course there is more cost then that,like soil(about $34.00 for 2 bags of fox farm ocean f)
I was going go hydro but the startup cost and i was worried about the humidity of hydro in a closet grow.
nutes dont cost much for 4 plants after the initial cost.

I second T5s. Look up PAR growing. Its like LED, which is the future but too expensive right now but there is a lot of crap out there giving them a bad name, without the cost. By using lights concentrated in the right spectrums, around 430nm blue, 660nm red and a little 550nm white(green), you keep the cost down and the yield up. The bulbs are a bit more expensive and can be purchased for around 20 bucks on aquarium store sites for coral growing. You'll have to ask around for the best combination of bulbs but from what I personally researched Id do an UVL redsuns are good for red. Some type of pure actinic that spikes at 550 for blue. 4 plants 16 square feet? Did you mean 2 x 2 for 4 square feet?