One aspect of eye strain is often linked to sore eye muscles, as these muscles must focus on the display for hours without relaxation. This is similar to other muscle-related pain that arises from constant tension in the same position. The eye muscles can be trained, there are exercises that can help reduce eye strain if performed regularly.
How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
211–220 of 309 posts
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just went through this with my car. All the OEM overhead interior lights were horrible 6000k+ type bulbs that not only made the interior feel like a hospital room but completely ruined my night vision turning me into the classic “Jesus!! You’re going to kill someone!” dad whenever my kids would fiddle with them at night. I cannot overstate how much of a difference it made switching them all to 3000k warm whites. Of…
Well done! How did you figure out 3000K replacement part numbers for each SMD?
I'm about to order a bunch of PCBs to substitute overhead lights on my car and some of my friends for something around 3000K and high CRI.
Not only the color temperature is so cold, but usually the spectrum is terrible, and the quality of the light is awful.
I just have to finish choosing the led driver :P
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#213put your monitor in front of a nice bland white wall, put a led strip at the back of your monitor that lights up the wall; this is reduces the contrast between the lightening from your monitor vs what's around, reducing eye strain a lot
no lights shining into your monitor , those just create reflections and make the screen harder to see
use the same for your TV, Philips Hue TVs are a good example on how to make the screen bigger and reduce eye strain, similmar things can be accomplished with that led strip
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#214A lot of the guidelines that are used to light a scene for a camera are also quite useful for lighting a room for yourself, just with less light needed as the human eye has a much higher dynamic range than a camera sensor: * Use diffuse light. This usually means multiple light sources bouncing and diffusing light off surfaces (ceilings, walls, etc) or diffusers. * Minimize shadows. Shadows lead to contrast which can…
Diffused bright light from a white wall behind you is not any better. Learned this the hard way when I started WFH in Anno Covidi 1.
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just went through this with my car. All the OEM overhead interior lights were horrible 6000k+ type bulbs that not only made the interior feel like a hospital room but completely ruined my night vision turning me into the classic “Jesus!! You’re going to kill someone!” dad whenever my kids would fiddle with them at night. I cannot overstate how much of a difference it made switching them all to 3000k warm whites. Of…
How do you feel about LED headlights (assuming your car has them)? Great for safety or too bright and tiring?
Not OP but I think it can be either. Great for the safety of one driver who can see the road perfectly can be awful for the safety of another who is blinded.
LED bulbs exacerbate an already existing problem caused by vehicle noses being too tall such that the headlight is exactly eye-height for other drivers. Sometimes they're poorly calibrated too, aiming too high. Many drivers also retrofit super bright LED lights on older cars that do a very bad job at properly focusing the beam on the ground (same thing was happening with drivers modding their old mirror reflector headlights with xenon lamps and giving everyone on the road an artists impression of a supernova up-close).
I've seen cars with lights that were obviously very bright but very well calibrated to point as much as possible to the road instead of my eyes. Those are maybe marginally more tiring than the warmer and much dimmer lights used in the past, but this is more than compensated in safety so probably a worthwhile trade. Proper calibration and sensible placing make all the difference.
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#2160) Yes, an evenly lit workspace is essential for any work.
0.1) Buy more lamps -- nothing fancy, ideally second hand, always with the common affordable household light socket. By the time you have the lighting arranged how you want, you may have too many lamps. At that point you can use your army of lamps to inform bigger (& more permanent) spending decisions.
1) If you have a regular occurrence of eyestrain or itchy or sore eyes -- particularly if you don't already wear glasses and don't think you're just spending too much time working (not sleeping) -- go to an optometrist and get your eyes/vision checked. Your eye muscles "expect" your eyes to be within spec and will work harder and harder to focus even if your eyes are wobbly and largely unfocusable like mine.
2) If your monitor's backlight flickers at a low enough frequency[0] that it's a problem -- get a new monitor[1]. If you spend enough time using your monitor that the eyestrain is real, upgrading your monitor is a no-brainer.
2.1) Spend time calibrating and adjusting your display/s, whatever it is.
3) Pay attention to how text is being rendered, be picky about it and change settings and fonts. Using all the anti-aliasing and hinting features is not always better.
3.1) Prefer light backgrounds with dark text. Your eyes have an easier time focusing with this configuration. If a light background is too bright to look at, you need to add light to the room. Understand that I put this point last because it is less significant than the others.
[0] flicker, PWM: would love to see some research on that, by the way. Does the switching frequency matter? (it certainly does for my hearing)
[1] FWIW, my general recommendation for serious, but not too serious, quality-cost sweet spot monitors is: IPS, 2560x1440, 27", high refresh rate (i.e. ~120 Hz) -- this comes with some risk of gamer-knife gun mount greeblies, of course.
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess by reflecting light off something silvery, eg, a wall painted in metallic silver paint.
That's not how colored light actually works. (That's the joke!) There isn't a silver "color" of light, it's a visual phenomenon that warps and reflects the color of the environment around it. So unfortunately there are no silver colored light bulbs (except for using a silver coating to block or reflect the light). Maybe it's that shiny reflective things like disco balls are therapeutic, imparting modernity, sophistic…
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Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#218On 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). I…
On your question about popularity - I would put it down to expense and noise.
The fans go like mad (especially on the cheaper projectors) and to get parity with a decent monitor, you have to spend thousands.
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#219I 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…
> I don't think your body makes vitamin D from being in a sunny room
This is correct, assuming the sunlight is being filtered through windows. The glass (or other materials) filters out the wavelengths (UV-B) that does the thing.
Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re probably better off using a high quality converter to DC and DC lights
in theory all the switching dc supplies will be operating on the same AC cycle thus the same led frequency
No the output differs dramatically depending on quality of the supply. Simple example to illustrate: