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How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

rustle.ca

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Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#191

Post by Joeri »

camhart wrote: post #15

A big thing not often spoken about with eye strain is dry eye caused by the lack of blinking due to focusing on screens too close to our face. This is an evolutionary phenomenon--close dangers cause extreme focus without blinking. Extreme focus on close items reduces our blinks. Our eye lids have glands in them that release oils on your eye with each blink. These oils help prevent the watery part of your tears from e…

I used to have this dry eye problem a lot, but turning down the brightness of the display really helped with that. The eyes can adapt to very low settings, almost at the bottom of the range on macs at night for example.

I find it is also important that whatever is behind the screen is lit indirectly equally to the brightness of the display. A bright screen in front of a dark wall is a perfect recipe for dry eyes for me.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#192

Post by pkolaczk »

gehwartzen wrote: post #168
walterbell wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well done! How did you figure out 3000K replacement part numbers for each SMD?

I happened to find someone on a German forum (cars a VW) that had taken his overheads apart to do the same thing who posted a p/n or rather an industry size. I had never dealt with replacing SMD LEDs before but it seems there is an industry standard sizing that most adhere to. Just ordered a few in that size from Amazon and they worked. From what I remember most in that size were rated for similar voltages so seemed…

Desoldering / resoldering is not pain if you have proper tools to do it and know the correct technique. Trying to do it with an iron is making things very hard or even impossible (especially for smds with contacts below not at the sides). Using hot air rework station + preheater and low melt solder paste is the way to go - and it’s a piece of cake then. And you can do the whole board at once in a few minutes.

I modded most LEDs in my house because 2700-3000K is too warm for me, but 4000K is too cool. So I mix them ;)

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#193

Post by DoingIsLearning »

On the topic of WFH eye strain but less on lighting.

There was a post a while back where the author proposed using a laser projector as a means of reducing eye strain.

She referred to lighting as a factor but I assume the major benefit is the increasing distance to the screen such that your eyes are focused on a point much further away than conventional screens (and I assume eye strain is not linear with distance).

Is there any evidence on this topic? Assuming space is not a problem why is a projector arrangement not more popular? (for office work where people don't care about colour accuracy)

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#194

Post by echoangle »

rusty-ux wrote: post #116
marcodena wrote: post #96

what suggestions do you have for the led strips behind the monitor? What if I wanna do the same for the back of my TV?

Best thing you can do for LED strips is to connect it to a flicker free dimmer control, such as this one made by waveform lighting. Requires a little DIY but it will mean 0 flicker. https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/filmgrade-flicke...

To be pedantic, they advertise 0 flicker when capturing with a camera at up to 240 fps. It’s probably still using PWM with maybe a few kHz, so physically, it’s still flickering.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#195

Post by qweiopqweiop123 »

jwr wrote: post #162
bensandcastle wrote: post #41

The natural light and diffuse light are good tips. Next is to get a big screen eg. 85" 4K and put it 1.5m away. That should be your main display. I don't have that all the time, but then I get some variety, 85" @ 1.5m a lot of the time, laptop some of the time, driving/walking etc. for longer range. 1.5m is the midpoint of focus for the muscles in your eyes. I built augmented reality displays and this was the focal p…

I would disagree with 1.5m, but I do recommend checking how close you are to your monitor. Let's assume you have a reasonably sized office monitor (27" or so). Extend your arm with your hand as a fist, forward. If your screen is closer to you than your knuckles, it's too close. Now, for the height: all monitor stands are too low. If you keep your head straight and look at the monitor, you should be looking at the upp…

I've always heard you should be in line with the top of your monitor when looking straight ahead. A quick google has says the said.

Either way we're on the same lines - too many people are looking up too much when looking at the monitor. It takes more effort than looking down.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#196

Post by notsydonia »

I appreciated this article and the intention behind it but I don't think your body makes vitamin D from being in a sunny room - you need to be outdoors with the Sun's rays beaming onto your bare skin.

I also cannot believe it's 2025, we have a lot of excessive features stuffed into practically every platform or tech product but nobody has come up with a genuinely healthier monitor/screen solution. LED - back lighting or ceiling - kills me, I hate it.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#198

Post by DoingIsLearning »

Kiro wrote: post #78
hirvi74 wrote: post #64

Is no lighting considered too little? I like to sit in the dark with nothing but a computer monitor for light. I have noticed this greatly reduces eye-strain and distractions, but perhaps that is just me.

Same here. Sounds like people are describing their yoga studios in this thread. Not for me.

A lot of it is learned behaviour. You get used to working and being productive at night because it's often when you have free time and quiet time. Your brain then starts associating that light setting/environment with 'in the zone' mental states.

As an example I used to be a midnight owl but now with kids I have to make the most of my daytime hours and squeeze as much sleep as I can in the night hours. I totally get the warmth of working the night hours but I am also fine with being in the zone during the daytime. You can shape your brain to get used to anything.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#200

Post by animal531 »

I have always had great eyes with no problems, I didn't have to pay attention to any articles such as these because my eyes just did their job and everything was fine.

BUT then I started working for myself and discovered that I had a pretty severe case of ADD for which I started taking medication. That caused quite a bit of dry eye, some because of the medication and some because I would just blink less. Shortly after that I also hit that age close to 50 where your eyes just degrade rapidly and stop focusing on close objects causing even more eye strain.

In about the span of a week I went from "normal" eyes to extreme eye strain, pain and light sensitivity.

I've had to make some big changes since then. I went for an eye checkup and got some glasses to help with the close vision. I also changed all my code, tools and web sites to dark mode where I can and turned down the brightness of all my displays a bit.

I'm also taking a lot of eye drops and edited my work timer app to just beep every defined amount of time (around 20 minutes) so I could take a quick break to stare into the distance. Also changing viewing distance helps, for example if I'm looking at something on Youtube then getting up and standing 2-3 meters away from my desk helps your eyes rest a bit.

I still need to look into lighting since I'm also sitting next to a big sliding glass door, so this article should come in handy there.

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