Are vegetables hurt by too much light?

Here is a question I'll be you guys haven't gotten yet - he he he!  We are designing our home that we'll break ground on soon, and need a place inside for the plants ("indoor garden").  Problem is that the house has to be pretty darned small due to finances, so the best place that we seem to be able to put them, is in the living room by the windows.  Where does the "too much light" part comes in?  Well, normally when the sun goes down, plants are in the dark, but in the living room, there will be a pretty fair amount of light until around 9:30-10:00 each night.  Will this affect the plants negatively in any way?  I don't want to keep them from producing or something!  Thanks in advance.

Are you talking about house plants or indoor veggies? In Alaska, the summer days are really long so I don't think too much sunlight will bother the veggies. What say others?

My thoughts ....

You might find that having the plants by a window will  cause them to die due to too much heat from strong direct or reflected sunlight .

 East facing windows tend to be a bit cooler as the sun should have moved round a lot before the heat of the day / afternoon causes problems . Plus it should be bright enough for most house plants & perhaps even a few greenhouse plants as well .
We sometimes also use north facing windows for plants & getting some seeds  going once the danger of frosts has gone

I have rosemary, peppermint & Medusa & her daughters (aloe plants) in an east-facing window. They love it there!

Thank you all, but what I'm asking is about is the ambient room light from the living room as we watch tv and work on the computers.  I'm not asking about the windows.  I am just concerned that lights in the living room after "normal plant lights out" time.  I have friends who grow MMJ, and I know that those plants are very picky about lights (or rather COMPLETE darkness) for certain times.  And though I know that veggies don't require total darkness like MMJ - but I don't want to screw up my peppers or tomatoes and any fruiting that may be happening...  Thanks all!

I dont know what MMJ is, but I have started my seeds indoors in my basement under T8 fluorescent lights with no problems on 24/7.  All seeds except roots and direct stuff (pole beans, spring stuff like sugar snaps, etc.)

My east facing window is their first look at sunlight.  I would love to have south windows but no!

Also watch your overhang depth since you are building!

Scorpio - MMJ=medical marijuana.  I don't have any interest in it, but have a friend who grows indoors and tells me about the total darkness they have to have (he's going to give me a tour of the grow room soon).  But all that aside, again what I am concerned with is ambient room lighting when the plants would normally be in the dark.

Saganco, If the plants are in the living room with the TV and computers, maybe you can cover them until your bedtime. Cut open a black garbage bag and lay over the frame??

The amount of day/light changes with the seasons and some plants use this to know when to flower. Too many hours of dark, or not enough, and they know it's not time to try to make fruits yet (using the word fruit in the botanical sense -where tomatoes count as fruits.) Some plants, called short-day plants, need a long period of darkness every night. I'm guessing MMJ is one of those, and the strict darkness ensures it starts forming flowers. Other plants, long-day plants, need short nights to tell them when to flower. Still other plants are day-neutral, and they flower once they reach maturity. (And there's probably some plants that are more complicated and don't fall cleanly into those three categories. I think there's some orchids that need specific temperature shifts to flower, for instance.)

Tomatoes are day-neutral, but they still need some darkness for general health. Here's an article about tomatoes and darkness:
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/tomatoes-grow-darkness-67767.html

Studies have indicated that the blue light from TVs can interfere with human internal clocks, so I would guess that if the tomatoes can 'see' the TV they will be affected, too. Whether the tomatoes get the 6-8 hours of darkness they want depends on how long it is from when you go to bed at night to when sunrise is the next morning (and maybe whether or not you have a street light shining in the window.)

saganco wrote:Scorpio - MMJ=medical marijuana.  I don't have any interest in it, but have a friend who grows indoors and tells me about the total darkness they have to have (he's going to give me a tour of the grow room soon).  But all that aside, again what I am concerned with is ambient room lighting when the plants would normally be in the dark.

Interesting question!!!  I did not know that about marijuana plants!

Since I posted this question, hubby has since redesigned the house to be built and I WILL HAVE A SUNROOM/garden area!!  So they will be able to be in the dark as needed!  Thank you all for your input.  Seems nothing in our lives at the moment is "set in concrete" - most things are "set in jello"!

A sunroom built to order! Saganco, How exciting to be building a new home!

Exciting and scary at 60 & 69 years old!  So many decisions to make, and so much potential to NOT like what we chose.  Plus the thousands of major aches and pains from being part of the crew - but when it's all done, I think it will be outstanding.  It's going to be small - about 1100 sf - but it's only the 2 humans and 2 kitties and plants...

My little house is situated at a road junction that is so will lit I can move around my kitchen and living room any time of the day and night.  That means that most of my garden shares the same street-lamp light and I wonder if that is detrimental to my plants.

In parts of the garden I even do some weeding if helped by some moonlight.

My friend lives near me but across the Columbia River and her roads have no streetlights and the first time I visited her after dark I had to be very careful not to do any damage to my car in backing out etc.  I am in the city and she is in an              un-incorporated area.

Well Kelejan, street lights will not be an issue at all.  There are none in our subdivision! 

Now the plan for the house/garden area is to have what some might call a sunroom/mud room - a fairly small area where you go thru that to get into the house.  THAT will be my very small garden (it's a 7' x 17' area, but part of that is for passing thru and such, so I won't get to use it all).  There's one large window between the living room and the "garden", so I was just concerned about ambient light from the living room, but honestly I don't think it's going to be an issue, and if it is, a curtain on that window should fix it.

So - I think my post has been dealt with well enough - I believe it's all a moot point now!  Thank you all for helping me sort thru it all.

Glad you got your answers.

Thanks!!  Great group here!