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How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

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

#81

Post by freefaler »

smrtinsert wrote: post #67
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.

This used to work for me as well, but one day my eyes just gave out. I now need a setup similar to the article. I use two diffuse light sources at corners in the room, with BenQ light bar in front, and (almost most importantly) a warm lamp backlighting the monitor. I might replace the backlight with an RGB bias light of some sort, but it has to be there or everything gets painful fast.

Yeah, light behind the monitor is a great idea. Reduces contrast between the bright monitor and dark background.

I've used this for years and it makes working during the evening so much better.

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

#82

Post by DavidVoid »

stevenAthompson wrote: post #62
neves wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a glasses with the focus optimized for 1.5m. A lot easier on my eyes for working than my progressive lenses.

How did you go about that? Can you just take your prescription someplace and have them made?

Not OP but look into "computer glasses". Usually they're optimized for distances a bit closer than 1.5 meters, but I'm sure that can be changed.

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

#83

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

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.

You're an exception.

For most people, sitting in the dark with only their monitor giving off light massively increases eye-strain.

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

#84

Post by sumea »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #23

A 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…

I am quite sensitive to glare. I have tried many setups in my windowless office with low ceiling height and have found linear up-down pendant lights the best option. Up-light is more important as it bounces soft light from ceiling. When I want to work in dimmer environment in the evenings, I switch off the down-light.

I also try to buy lightning fixtures that are designed anti-glare although they are more expensive. You can also make pendant lights yourself with led strips and aluminium profiles.

Your eyesight and glasses also matter a lot. My glasses are quite worn with lots of scratches. They definitely make issues worse.

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

#85

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #68
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I think the population at large, and especially programmer types, know way too little about lighting given how ubiquitous both lighting and photography/videography is in our everyday life. Good on you for fighting the warm light fight!

They claim to know a lot but then none of them build proper Cf Lumen or F.Lux style tooling (i.e. super easy default instead of requiring tons of setup) for turning ALL blue light off (red shifting) IN THE DEFAULT OS as the primary way to use your device at night. None of that wussy shifting the color temperature brown shit that doesn't meaningfully reduce blue light hazard. I can literally preserve my whole night vi…

> The laser pointer community of all groups understands this stuff well

This has been my major frustration also. Different enthusiast communities all discover these things independently and talk about them in their own domain language. Night photography and astral photography talks about red shifting as well.

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

#86

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

jen729w wrote: post #27

This is worth considering in the context of driving at night. I used to get terrible eye strain, causing fatigue and sleepiness. Obviously not good. Then I bought a Saab 900. It had a 'night mode' that disabled all dials except the speedo. The lights went off and the dial went down. (It came back on if it needed to alert you of something, say low fuel.) [0] This made a radical difference, and led me to the dash-brigh…

Are there any cars that DON'T have a way to adjust the brightness of the dash lighting?

Every car I've ever owned (86 Chrysler, 2000 Suzuki, 2016 Subaru, 2019 Tesla) had a dial to adjust the brightness of the dashboard lighting, or in the case of the Tesla, adjust the brightness of the screen.

Sure, I couldn't completely shut anything off like your Saab, but I could easily turn the brightness down pretty dim.

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

#87

Post by c0balt »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #68
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I think the population at large, and especially programmer types, know way too little about lighting given how ubiquitous both lighting and photography/videography is in our everyday life. Good on you for fighting the warm light fight!

They claim to know a lot but then none of them build proper Cf Lumen or F.Lux style tooling (i.e. super easy default instead of requiring tons of setup) for turning ALL blue light off (red shifting) IN THE DEFAULT OS as the primary way to use your device at night. None of that wussy shifting the color temperature brown shit that doesn't meaningfully reduce blue light hazard. I can literally preserve my whole night vi…

> They claim to know a lot but then none of them build proper Cf Lumen or F.Lux style tooling (i.e. super easy default instead of requiring tons of setup) for turning ALL blue light off (red shifting) IN THE DEFAULT OS as the primary way to use your device at night.

Probably not what you are aiming for but for Linux this is a somewhat solved problems. The default DM, Gnome, has built-in color shift with a time schedule AFAIK. For Wayland and xorg there are also numerous other solutions that do a display-level redshift, I can recommend wl-sunset for Wayland.

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

#88

Post by hammock »

divan wrote: post #55

Having worked from home for many years, I was surprised that I had never come across the acronym “WFH” before. It took me a moment to decipher its meaning, especially since the article introduced another acronym, “PWM” (pulse-width modulation), right at the start.

Have you heard of COVID? Is your home the ISS or something?

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

#89

Post by hammock »

marcyb5st wrote: post #5

For me the revolution was to get a rather expensive monitor [1] with a great reader mode that lessen the flicker considerably. When I game with it and I turn off reader mode my eyes really feel the difference even though I spend way less time gaming than working. I wonder if OLEDs will be even better since they shouldn't flicker during productivity (from what I read at least). [1] was one of the LG ultrawide 34" but…

What is reader mode and how do I activate it? Is reader mode a low refresh rate?

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

#90

Post by hammock »

taylorbuley wrote: post #73

Environmental modification is one of my favorite emotional coping strategies. It.. feels like you're actually doing something! Cleaning up/tidying, "sacred space creation," light and color therapy all work way more effectively than you might believe.

Talk to me about color therapy
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