How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain | Hacker News Reader

How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

rustle.ca

695 pointsjahfer297 comments

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 lead to eye strain. Use multiple, maybe directional, light sources to illuminate shadows.

* Minimize highlights. Windows without blinds let in lots of light which leads to contrast and can lead to eye strain. Curtains and blinds are great ways to diffuse light.

* Uniform color temperature. Try to make sure all your lights have the same color temperature. Small variations are okay but large color temperature variations lead to color contrast which also tends to be hard on eye strain.

* Select your color temperature based on needs and feeling. A lot of people prefer warmer color temperature lights and cool temperature lights are known to be more stressful for folks with anxiety-related conditions, but if your work requires accurate color representation, or you find yourself mentally trying to compensate for color temperature, then change the temperature to what you find most productive yet relaxing.

* Wall color. Remember that "white" light that reflects off colored surfaces will take on a hue similar to the reflected surfaces. Walls of different colors can cause challenges for uniform color temperature, and warm colored walls can take cold lights and turn them warm.

A side effect, of course, is that your room will become a lot more photogenic. It's no coincidence since photogenic rooms are often just easiest on the eye to look at.

"Golden Hour" is considered a great time for photogenic events, photographs, and videos. "Golden Hour" lighting tends to be diffuse, not too strong, and warm toned. Humans tend to really like this style of lighting and if you do too, you might want to recreate some of these properties in your office.

In the history of LED lighting, it took quite a bit of work (hybrid phosphor technology, etc) to get them to emit warm color temperatures. The exact color temp can be a personal preference, but I think a lot of people aren't privy to the difference the color temperature of "white" light can make!

I want to go on a guerrilla campaign around my neighborhood and replace porch light bulbs with warm equivalents.

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 vision and have zero eye strain in pitch black conditions by red shifting my computer screen. No one supports this because we are stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_effects_of_high-ene...

The laser pointer community of all groups understands this stuff well. They recommend green lasers because they use the lowest power for the highest visibility at night. Blue lasers are easy to get super powerful, but unlike a lower powered green one, which usually will only temporarily blind you if you make a mistake - a powerful blue laser will straight up destroy your eyes forever. Permanent blindness.

> 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.

> 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.

KDE does too

Can confirm https://github.com/jonls/redshift works great; been using it for years.

I don't really get that impression. To the contrary: How dangerous blue light is supposed to be is commonly repeated, with many products for filtering it out, like glasses, and software in all devices that does the red shifting. Android has it by default, Linux does, macOS - is Windows missing? Or is there something in the implementation of those measures that you object to?

But note that the wikipedia article you link states clearly that the eye strain attributed to blue light has no scientific evidence. That's also what I found out last time I looked into it - all those very strong statements about how dangerous blue light emission is supposed to be has no equivalent scientific studies that prove them. I think there was also a prominent article about that here on HN.

I think the effect might be completely made up, as it is something that is easy to believe and to subjectively feel that it works, by a placebo effect basically.

There are old studies on the hazard of blue light. I found a few of them on https://scholar.google.com - I suspect they’re hard to find if you don’t know about specific keywords to include in your query.

The blue light problem has to do with how high energy blue photons interact with specific substances found in minute quantities in our eyes, leading to inflammation.

It's insanity to be told that your claim is basically psudoscience or fake when night vision preservation, the mechanism of prevented eye-strain, is a well confirmed and relied upon part of our biology. Go talk to astronomers. I'm aware of Wikipedia claiming what you say it does. That's an incitement of Wikipedia and the big blue light crowd.

Further, actual studies of filteirng blue light needed the right display tech. Before OLED, I couldn't actually "turn off the non red pixels", and thus never fully eliminated blue light from my display. Most of the "science" around blue light is trash. Yes, I say this as someone who actively published at top AI conferences and is intimately familiar with peer review.

I'm going to keep on preserving my night vision and browsing the internet for hours with zero issues at night while being told that my red shifted phone is placebo. You try turning your OLED phone on at full brightness in the middle of the night with and without the red-shift and tell me which hurts your eyes more...

There is no big blue light crowd. There has always only been the "blue light is bad" position, which was completely ignored by the industry (with display colour defaults especially) until that turned around completely, after the success of f.lux broke a barrier I think.

Please notice two things: 1. It's not even about whether blue light might be harder on the eyes in general, but whether it matters on the brightness levels consumer devices are usually used (so astronomers are completely irrelevant to that discussion, and so is a modern phone at night at full brightness) and what the actual effects are in practice 2. It's an astonishing position to take, to at the one hand realize there is no scientific basis for the claim, but still act 100% convinced. Especially for an academic.

It's also not obvious why "night vision preservation" might be relevant. We are not talking about looking at things during the dark, but at (more or less brighly) illuminated objects.

I don't have skin in this game and likely won't respond further. I even have a weak red light shift active while writing this (I feel like it might help with the sleep rhythm a bit). But I am absolutely saying that claims like this need scientific evidence and that it is foolish to believe in such things only because it's currently a popular claim, to take that position that absolutely. This is not the correct way of thinking, and there is no need to not leave space for doubt.

What do I need to preserve night vision for? Unless I'm using my computer to help stargaze, I would rather have color graphics.

I literally feel sad when I turn off the blue light (using f.lux) or turn on eye saver mode on my monitor. No idea how to fix this.

While the color temperature situation has improved, the actual spectral quality of most consumer LED lighting still leaves a lot to be desired. CRI makes an effort to measure this, although it's a low-granularity measurement.

I personally buy surplus cinema lighting equipment and use it to light my house. I have a bunch of fancy cinematic LEDs with high CRIs that produce decent light, although they still can't fully compete with tungsten bulbs (e.g. Arrilite series)

Ideally you want to be looking for something with a color temperature in the 3500K (mid-morning) to 6500K (clear blue noon day) range and a CRI of 95+. Also bug manufacturers to start using better color quality metrics like TM-30.

Where do you buy the surplus cinema lighting equipment? And how do you mount it inside your house?

I went down a high CRI office lighting rabbit hole last year and I could only find expensive, new photography lights.

These guys do very high quality lighting aimed at homes and offices: https://www.waveformlighting.com/

Just get modules or strip from Yuju; I have zero bad experience over many years with them.

Sure, it's not cheap, but IMO ~1$/W plus simple PSU (either some standard voltage, or dimmable current, depending on what you got) for good and 1.5~2$/W for very good CRI is quite fine.

Yep. I’ve been replacing all the bulbs in my house with Yuji SunWave, and the difference is astonishing. I just put in four of their PAR30 4000K bulbs above my kitchen island, and the first time I turned the lights on at night I gasped at how much it looked like sunlight. (Then again, my wife said she couldn’t tell much of a difference and suggested my reaction was possibly confirmation bias, so YMMV.)

They’re quite expensive compared to normal LED bulbs, but it’s hard to argue against the quality of life improvement, particularly in the winter where I work remotely from a home office all day.

I was actually considering setting up an high brightness array of their full spectrum lighting above my desk. I know the article mentions diffuse lighting is best, but for some odd reason I prefer “spotlight” style. I don’t know why—it just feels cozier to me.

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve learned more about lighting is that the brighter the light, the better cool color temperatures start to look. For a long time I hated anything above 3000K (too “office-like”) but 4000K actually starts looking pretty good around ~7,000 lumens directly overhead, and I imagine 5000K would look alright above 15,000 lumens or so (perceived brightness is a logarithmic function of luminance). IMO 5000K looks downright ghastly in a home setting for the typical range of 500-800 lumens that most bulbs sell at nowadays.

Yuji looks quite good, thanks. I need to see if I can integrate this with my DMX/Zigbee lighting control.

Unless you want individually addressable LEDs, the answer to the "if I can" is "yes".

Also, MediaLight provide great high CRI options bias lighting for your TV or monitor, further reducing your eyestrain when watching TV at night: https://www.biaslighting.com/

Craigslist. I just have a bunch of alerts for various cinema lighting brands (among other industrial goods I like using in my house, like pelican cases).

For mounting, it depends. Some things, like Pavotubes, come with screw-in mounting solutions. Other stuff may require dedicated photo mounting hardware. Manfrotto Superclamps and similar are a great way to mount lights to random pipes, beams, etc.

Also, most cinema lighting supports DMX control, which is nice for automation. It's harder to set up than Zigbee, but it works a lot better once you get it set up. That bit is definitely not consumer-friendly though.

using surplus cinema lighting equipment is genius.

If you're patient, it's crazy how much money you can save off of new pricing. I frequently see discounts north of 75% off new price for stuff in pretty good condition.

Ah mate, I'd settle for manufacturers to even publish colour quality of there lights, even if it's just CRI. At least here in NZ, like 99% of the consumer lights say nothing about colour quality, and many are pretty average (not to mention flicker).

Along light temperature there's light cri as well, which measures how faithful to real life a light is. New standards such as Tm30 came out recently as well

It's hard enough to get the CRI out of manufacturers. I've never seen any other measure of light quality reporter ever.

Waveform lighting publishes their reports.

CRI is usually only reported on professional grade lamps (Theatre, Film/TV) you'll almost never find it reported on anything below that.

Some consumer bulbs at least used to have it listed on their packaging.

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 course instead of being replaceable bulbs they were all SMDs directly soldered onto little PCBs making it a bit of a project … but so worth it!

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 pretty universal. I imagine as long as you can see the led and measure its dimensions finding a replacement should be easy.

Desoldering/soldering was a pain as they were tiny; like 2mmx2mm. One cool thing I learned though is that you can use a multimeter in its ‘continuity’ setting to provide enough current to light up these small LEDs which is very convenient when testing if you soldered them correctly.

https://www.zgsm-china.com/blog/something-you-should-know-ab...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiguan/comments/1hq2hae/changed_ove...

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 ;)

Oh that’s good to know! Yeah, I definitely didn’t do myself any favors trying it with just a cheap unadjustable iron. I didn’t so much desolder the existing LEDs but instead just melted/scraped them off and cleaned the contacts. Was ugly for sure.

Do you by chance have any resources (videos or tutorials) to recommend that show how this is best done?

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

> some of my friends

Lucky friends! Maybe repair shops could offer customized interior lighting as an aftermarket service.

Thing is, when you order a small PCB, the price difference between 1 and 20units is usually negligible, so I'd try to find the light sizes for all my friends cars :D

Truth is, aftermarket lights for cars (typical AliExpress or Amazon stuff) always focus on brightness, but never on quality. It's usual for taxi drivers to have aftermarket lights in the vehicle, so you can find your money or credit card more easily, but the light quality is always terrible. :P

The bad LEDs can also be improved with yellow or amber film, which is more accessible to most people than desoldering.

I found a German company that sent me a free sample of their amber film. As I recall their market was semiconductor manufacturing, but I can’t find them again. Amazon has a variety of films that should work.

Absolutely! That was my initial idea as well. Glad to know it’s an option

If you look towards companies like Rosco or Lee they have hundreds of options for just this application.

A sheet of Rosco 3408 takes you from about 5500K to 3800K so a much warmer colour. A small sheet which should be enough goes for about £7 https://shopwl.com/rosco-roscolux-3408-roscosun-1-2-cto/ you can probably find it cheaper just by searching Rosco 3408

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.

The cold LED headlights also strain your eyes more as the driver. It's much less comfortable to look at IMO.

Unfortunately I can't compare between 2 modern cars equipped with similar lights save for the color temperature. I haven't seen modern LED headlights with warm color, so when I think of warm color headlights my brain immediately goes to my experience with cars as old as the mid '70s, with filament bulbs. This evokes memories of almost blindly searching for the road right in front of me, compared to today's "I can see 200m ahead".

So by this measure, not having to squint to see anything ahead, my (aging) eyes feel much more rested and reassured today than decades ago.

Are there new cars with warm LED lights?

I'm comparing more to 2010s cars :)

I think it's a pretty good balance between visibility and comfort. But I can definitely see your point.

> Are there new cars with warm LED lights?

I don't know actually, but I've definitely not seen any on the road. I wonder why, as far as I know it's not a technical issue.

This is the level of obsession I aspire to reach one day. I love it!

I own a 90s BMW and the interior lighting looks phenomenal in that car. Not great for passenger night reading or applying makeup though. Haha

I've become somewhat expert at identifying cheap prefabulated automotive LED modules on AliExpress that seem unlikely to be problematic, and modifying them to be something other than awful and stupid.

It seems like such needless work. All I want are ~3000k LED widgets in various standard-automotive sizes that aren't stupid.

What I get are ~3000k LED widgets that are overdriven and painful to be around at night, which also have extra "CANBUS" resistors that only serve as heaters.

It's all pretty repulsive. Some recentl examples I got consumed 2.6 Watts, and about half of that was deliberately wasted as nothing but heat.

(2.6 Watts is quite a lot for a little LED board to dissipate, which results in early failures and flickering and other nonsense.)

But with the stupid heater-resistors removed, that dropped to only an eye-burning 1.3 Watts.

With the current-limiting resistor swapped to a higher value, power consumption was reduced to a few hundred mW and the light output approximated the relatively-unintrusive incandescent lamp that was originally fitted.

And finally, after all of that work of finding and modding the things, I can open the car door at night without becoming blind -- just like it was the 1990s again -- and also preserve the battery for things like starting the engine.

I'm curious what is the percentage of the population that prefers 3000k warm light. I personally disliked it. My mind constantly notices the distortion in color accuracy, and it's an unpleasant feeling. My preference is 5000k "day" light.

> I think a lot of people aren't privy to the difference the color temperature of "white" light can make

Go out and buy cheap Christmas lights and expensive ones, and put them up next to each there, and show them that. The difference is staggering. To the point where they look dumb if you hang them up together.

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.

Glasses are extremely affordable online (e.g. eyebuydirect, owned by the same multi-billion dollar company that sells lenses and frames to local opticians) if you have the prescription, PD (pupil distance) and physical frame measurements of your current glasses.

I agree up until golden hour. It's a very specific style of lighting and isn't any better or worse. It's not the best time to take a picture, it doesn't have the best light. It's a specific kind of light.

Eh, I can tell you I definitely had more sales of portrait prints at golden hour for my high school senior sessions.

You can, of course, make great photos in any light. Golden hour and blue hour are easy because the light is inherently nice.

Right I don't disagree. I just wanted to hold up golden hour as a specific example of lighting properties that humans tend to subconsciously really enjoy and evoke that as a source of inspiration for lighting your home spaces. Maybe you don't care for the overly warm temperatures but you enjoy the diffuse, desaturated look.

This is more just a comment written to get folks who are considering lighting to think critically about it for the first time. The average person plops a bright stand lamp in a corner of the room and calls it a day, maybe with a dimmer if they're a bit advanced. The fact that you have an opinion about golden hour lighting means you're already beyond that point :)

I'm in a basement and had fairly good success with certain "led shop lights" to make the space feel more like it has natural light (though I could improve things further).

I do find however, that using diffuse lighting and minimizing shadows is what makes lighting feel artificial.

Natural sunlight has very parallel rays that create very evenly lit surfaces with very sharp shadows. Whereas most artificial light has radial rays around the light source that diminish in intensity with the cube of the distance and thus create fading gradients on surfaces and weak shadows especially if you have many of them.

I find I miss the feel of parallel rays of natural light so I try to find lights that have for example, parabolic reflectors to make the rays more parallel and position a few of them farther away from me pointed towards my visual field to try to replicate natural sunlight coming through a window.

One challenge however, is that it's surprisingly difficult to get good parallel rays from artificial light sources because of conservation of etendue ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue ). I wish there were more options on the market.

What I'm trying to achieve is lighting a bit like in these "Artificial Skylight" concepts: https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/let-there-be-... They claim their technology is about "Rayleigh scattering" but I think that's mostly marketing mumbo jumbo. Sure that might add a bit of diffuse blue but their main secret, I would bet, is parallel rays which explains why their fixtures require so much space above the ceiling to get around conservation of etendue. The effect of parallel rays and sharp shadows are definitely represented in their example pictures.

I’ve installed 4 similar skylight lamps to the basement. Bought them on Amazon for 700$ each (had to replace 1 because it had uneven light). They make basement light much closer to ourdoor light and made basement very cozy and comfortable. I had depth space in the ceiling, but width of the lamp didn’t fit between joists - so could not push lamp all the way at the ceiling level. End up building nice boxing around lamp. So it was medium complexity project with great result.

I'd wager they're pretty good. If you can leverage a parabolic reflector at a light's focal length, you can get them to collimate in a way that approximates the sun by appearing to be pinned near-infinitely far away. The reflector is generally what takes up the space, but it's necessary(ish) -- you could approximate the effect by using a fresnel lens at the light's focal length, but it yields a smaller light with rainbowing effects.

[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw&t=843s) does a good job of showing how to make your own, as well as illustrating how good the effect is, while also demonstrating why space-hog implementations are likely to yield good results and slimmer ones not.

Reminds me of this old dyi video about using decommissioned led monitors to create light boxes with parallel rays to emulate sunlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4

I've been wondering for a while now if our indoor lighting is too dim. Even in the shade during midday you're looking at 20,000 lux. Overcast days look dark and dreary and they're on the 1000-2000 lux range.

Meanwhile home lighting is well below the 500 lux range, if not even in the 100-200.

I even suspect that the current near-sightedness epidemic is caused by people spending too much time in dim lighting. Maybe if our indoor lighting was brighter our eyesight would not adapt to become near-sighted as much.

Yeah there's definitely that aspect too. Though nowadays, led lighting is so efficient that you can get a lot of brightness on reasonable wattage.

That's not enough for the light to feel natural though, you also have to have the parallel rays. And then there's also challenges with brighter lighting to set it up so it's not uncomfortably bright in your field of view or blinding you :-)

> I even suspect that the current near-sightedness epidemic is caused by people spending too much time in dim lighting. Maybe if our indoor lighting was brighter our eyesight would not adapt to become near-sighted as much.

It's not that eyes are adapting to low light so much as the fact that exposure to 10k lux stimulates the release of neurotransmitters which prevent the eye from growing too quickly. Last I checked, the recommendation is for children to spend 2+ hours per day outdoors in sunlight. Morning and evening aren't sufficiently lit so it really comes down to school and after-school care scheduling enough outdoors time.

>* Select your color temperature based on needs and feeling. A lot of people prefer warmer color temperature lights and cool temperature lights are known to be more stressful for folks with anxiety-related conditions, but if your work requires accurate color representation, or you find yourself mentally trying to compensate for color temperature, then change the temperature to what you find most productive yet relaxing.

This is huge. I personally can not stand warm color temperatures in my office or bedroom, I know all the colors are off and it aggravates me to no end. On the other hand, I can't stand cool color temperatures in the dining room because it doesn't lend well to eating comfortably. And in either case, I can't stand warm color temperatures on any monitors/screens or televisions because of the same reason as when I'm in my office or bedroom.

Use color temperatures that suit your preferences, going against them just because someone says it's better for you (eg: red shift at night, aka blue light fearmongering) is patented bullshit.

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.

Is there a way to diffuse light from overhead recessed lighting? For me the ‘soft’ LED bulbs I have aren’t enough. I wish there was some kind of diffusion cover I could put on the outside of the recessed housing that softens the light further but also doesn’t look like I hacked something together.

But I also wonder - why has there been such wide adoption of overhead recessed lighting? To me they’re a big part of why lighting in modern homes looks harsh.

That’s funny cause I’m going the exact opposite direction and trying to remove the diffuse lighting and replace it with very hard and bright lighting that has a spectrum as similar to sunlight as I can find/afford.

Recessed lighting with parabolic reflectors collimates light conically, which is more similar sunlight than omnidirectional lighting that passes through a diffuser. The sun is basically a point source so far away that the light rays that reach us are almost parallel. To me it feels much “cozier” than soft lighting, which gives everything a bland, washed out look and makes me sleepy during the work day.

I was even thinking about replacing my surface mount LED lighting with recessed cans. But everyone is obviously quite different in their preferences haha. If you want more diffuse lighting, there are filters and lenses they sell that you can slide into the cans.

Wow that is a very different take. I’m on the verge of going to floor lamps only.

> If you want more diffuse lighting, there are filters and lenses they sell that you can slide into the cans.

Any idea what they’re called or what to look for? I’ve tried searching and only found whole recessed cans that come with those filters but not something that I can fit into the cans I already have.

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 evaporating. When it evaporates your eyes dry out causing discomfort and potentially pain.

If you don't blink enough, the oil doesnt get on your eyes and eventually, in extreme cases, the glands can even die. A lack of oil in tears can cause extreme eye fatigue and even pain.

This is why dry eyes is on the rise. Remember to blink!

I actually built a little web app to count my blinks. See https://dryeyestuff.com/. Not perfect, just a prototype. 100% free.

Interesting. Could an external stimulus trigger a subconscious blink?

I'm not aware of any triggers to cause subconscious blinking. That'd be fantastic if there was an option though.

The web app can trigger a notification if your blinks / minute drop too low. Only challenge is modern browsers throttle websites that aren't visible, so the blink counting gets messed up.

Maybe you could set up the conditions for a Pavlovian response.

E.g. let your app give a signal (e.g. beep or buzz) every 30 seconds if you don't blink. Then train yourself to blink if you hear the signal.

Edit: Yes, it can be done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeblink_conditioning

You could also lie less often, because you blink less frequently when you lie. ;)

https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/23166678/HICSS47_Do_Liars_Bl...

Someone just shared an extension that inserts random jump scares onto social media sites that you want to avoid. Maybe adding jump scares to work applications can help people blink more often, too.

> Could an external stimulus trigger a subconscious blink?

you could set something up where a water gun squirts you on a random interval between 2-5 minutes. heh i think i would kill someone if they did that to me.

btw, if you have 2 different monitors on different lengths from your eye you change focus more frequently and your eyes feel better.

A laptop + big monitor is less irritating for the eyes as long as they aren't put exactly on the same line.

When you get old enough, your eyes stop focussing.

Optometrist recommended I take daily fish oil and give it a month to see result. Sure enough, roughly a month later, I stopped having dry eyes. My eyes feel good even now during winter, when both outside and inside air is quite dry.

I, too, experienced dry eyes and found it challenging to consciously blink regularly. A few years ago, someone gifted me one of these "3-D puzzles" (similar to this: https://www.amazon.ca/Bookend-Miniature-Bookshelf-Birthday-B...). I kept it on my desk and it helped me somewhat regulate my constant focus on the screen by prompting me to glance at it occasionally. That's just something that worked for me.

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.

Cool web app but doesn't work unless I take my glasses off, sadly.

This is a great idea, and it seems surprisingly accurate.

I know it's a prototype, but in case you're interested in feature requests: if I have multiple webcams, it seems to just choose the first one without a way to select another.

Wouldn't an app that randomly turns the screen black for a split second every few minutes be able to induce blinking as a response?

Pretty nifty, except that it also detects "winks" as "blinks".

I once used shop lights aimed at my ceiling to get through a winter, while avoiding depression. Four pairs on stands around the room, behind the furniture aimed at a vaulted ceiling.

It worked very well. Every day felt like summer.

I quickly learned to turn off the sun and go back to regular lighting around 5pm.

In my next house, where I am now, I have large cove molding rectangles with recessed bands of LED lighting, all bouncing off the ceiling.

It’s great, because it’s really bright, but so even. Like a good day outside. You feel very awake, alert, & energized, but it is very relaxing too.

They dim, but perhaps for the same reasons as the article mentioned, that isn’t always as relaxing. So I have different accent lighting & lamps in each room to create different evening moods.

For working at home, for many years, the combination has been great.

This is another +1 for WFH. Many office environments have terrible lighting, and there's very little you can do about it.

The over-bright lighting, monitor glare, and eye strain are a favorite conversation topic at my workplace since RTO.

I remember standing up on office chairs to twist the florescent tube bulbs above my desk just enough to turn them off. That light was just awful.

It helped a lot until maintenance would come in at night and "fix" the light and I'd have to do it all over.

Same. Though mine got left off for a long time which was great.

Could be worse. I worked in an old building in London which I think used to be a warehouse. It was renovated but the lighting was very low and they said they couldn't install stronger diffused lighting because of the local code. They eventually added hanging spotlights. Very bright and very narrow. But they would always end up shining right into someone's eyes. Every once in a while someone got annoyed by one and would rotate it in some other direction, only to piss someone else off.

I did the same thing and it was good for a long time, then one day I came in to find the maintenance people replacing it - thinking it was broken - instead of just twisting it back. I guess they weren't too bright (lol).

Amen. I wear a ballcap at the office.

Ours are absolutely atrocious.

I forgot just how bad it got until they did a big office move a couple of months ago. Previous to that I'd been way out on the edge with large windows behind me (with some shading film on them). My move now put me in the centre of the floor with barely a window in visible range, stuck under these godawful, far too bright lights.

The first day in that space reminded me just how much I'd hated that aspect of things before the pandemic.

My eyes are sensitive to glare, so in my last job I took to wearing the visor I wore outside also inside. Got some weird looks but it was a lot easier on my eyes.

Oh god they just replaced our horrible fluorescent tubes with dazzling white LED. From bad to worse.

I have a friend who setup lighting in there garage where he works on servers, he was really proud of his new lights, when I came in, I was shocked to see he picked the worst lights possible, blinding blue/white, flickering, shining directly into your face.

I don't know how he does it, but I can't stand it.

Also, at work we have fluorescent tubes, it's so bad. Sometimes when I work weekends (by my self), I'll leave them off when I get in, just use natural light. It's so much nicer. Also helps that the building "A/C" is off too. I quote it because it's a sad excuse for A/C which barely cools, just makes a huge amount of noise for doing nothing.

Had a coworker that could notice the flickering from the bulbs (fluorescent?). I can't see it, but for those who can it's apparently really jarring.

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 plane we selected for to minimize eye strain and the felt sense of vergence/accommodation conflict.

We could then throw graphics as close as ~30cm, or at infinity using vergence adjustments, even though the accommodation was at a fixed 1.5m. Graphics felt best at that distance, but they also felt ok in the range 0.5-10m, which suited nearly all productivity scenarios.

85" @ 1.5m is insanely big for me, do you not get sore having to dart your eyes about to read the corners?

> do you not get sore having to dart your eyes about to read the corners?

I wouldn't be surprised if this is what makes it healthier. Not only are you exercising your eyes, you're also giving them a chance to let you know when they need a break.

Yep, I set my mouse sensitivity to extremely low as well so that I’m basically “wiping the windshield” of my desk while using my computer

I do almost exactly this, but instead use a cheapish 65" 4k/60hz TV instead. I can see bits of my surroundings with my peripheral vision, but only with the parts of my vision that are already blurry.

I suspect that 85" was chosen to maximize immersion for gamers (cover the entire field of view), rather than to minimize eyestrain. For me doing development work on a 65" from about 1.5m is close to ideal.

I have a 4k projector setup which I use from time to time instead of my regular 27” monitor. It makes a pretty big difference especially as it is reflected light. I can sit in front of it for hours without any noticeable eye strain.

It’s fine for doing graphical work or web browsing but really not ideal for things like code or excel as I lose my place too often with my eyes having to dart around further. Might just be sitting too close though.

Can the eye distinguish between emitted and reflected light?

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.

I used to work in the optical industry, that's not what computer glasses are, they are just blue blocker lenses.

Any lens can be customized for desired focal length, including distance, intermediate (e.g. computer) or closeup/reading.

Right. It's an industry term though and doesn't have anything to do with focal length.

Consumers develop their own interpretations and usage of industry terms used in marketing to consumers.

The magic words I think are “occupational multifocals”, which have a small area at the top for distance vision and the remaining 75% set for whatever your occupation is. You need to be very specific on the distance setting

Yes. This is the better solution.

Some expensive lenses like Zeiss, Varilux, and Hoya make you an extra pair when you by one. I tought that the extra pair must be equal the first one, but it isn't necessary. I could have asked for a general one and one with a greater area for medium distance.

Tell your optometrist you want that, and they'll write the prescription.

Last I went, they wrote me two different prescriptions: one with an up-close focal point for books/screen work, and a second one with the focal point further out for driving.

Yes. You can have reading lenses or lenses for medium distance. Measure the distance from your seat to the screen. Get a max, minimum and most common distance in your different seating positions.

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 upper third. VESA mounting arms or monitor stands solve this problem.

    all monitor stands are too low. If you keep your head straight and look at the monitor, you should be looking at the upper third.

If the stand were too low and were to replace it with a higher one, you would then be looking at the lower part of the monitor and that is better?

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.

GP said too low, not too high. I'm thinking a typo though because that doesn't make much sense to me and I agree with you - I always have to adjust monitors as low as they can go in the office.

Not a typo. Most monitors are too low. You should not have to bend your neck to look at your monitor.

But some office setups have other issues, such as chairs that are too low, or desks that are too high, in which case your monitor might end up at the right height, but that doesn't mean much if the rest of your setup is wrong.

Begin with the desk+chair: they need to be set up so that when your hands are on the keyboard, your elbows form a right angle, or very close to it. Look at piano players for reference. Most setups fail that test. But once you get that right, you will notice that your monitor is way too low and all the stands are too low, which was my point.

You need to be looking at the top third when staring straight ahead, otherwise you will need to bend your neck to look at the lower part of the monitor and you will end up with neck pain. Top third, ideally around 2/3 of the monitor, so not the very top.

I struggled for years to find a lighting set up for my work from home environment. I eventually realized that it was the quality of light not necessarily the quantity of light I needed to address.

On a whim, I purchased two of those plant grow lamps with full spectrum, lighting, and pointed them upwards perched on a tall pedestal reflecting off of the ceiling.

This has worked far better than any other lighting strategy I’ve ever tried and seems to have mostly solved my seasonal affectedness disorder. It has been 0° and windy outside lately with no sun and I’m doing fine.

I am in fact a plant.

Glad to hear someone else doing this. I feel bad not using the grow light to... you know... grow plants. But the light it provides in my office is lovely.

Monitor brightness down, ambient light up. Monitors are promoted as having crazy brightness, but this is exactly what you don't want for long hours of staring at the screen. You need it as dim as possible without making it hard to see. I run mine at 20% of the factory default.

And of course turn the lights on and/or open a window. No more cave coding.

My other suggestion is sunglasses for every moment you spend in sunlight. This makes a huge difference.

The bottom line is to simply quit making your eyes adjust to extreme swings in brightness.

Many people overlook how spaces are lit from an aesthetic perspective as well as a from the functional perspective this article is written from. Lamps and other eye-level lighting sources do more than just help eye strain as the article suggests; they also work wonders from an interior design perspective, and make spaces feel way more livable. I always find homes overly reliant on overhead lighting struggle to shake the more sterile feel of offices, where overhead dominates.

You can have both though, overhead white lighting for the day and lower temperature lamps for the evening. It's not a binary choice.

If you do a lot of video calls, you can also consider how to light yourself so that you show up well on camera. The traditional three-point lighting setup is a good place to start. A key light which is the brightest, main light source, a fill light which is from the opposite side to soften shadows and a backlight to help you stand out from backgrounds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting

0) 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.

> 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.

My work laptop flickers and the only solution was to throttle the CPU. Seems like it draws too much power and the AC cable that came with it can't handle it at medium loads.

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.

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.

You're an exception.

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

I do not wear eye glasses nor contacts, so I wonder if this is a difference maker? I have noticed people who wear either tend to complain about eye-strain more in general.

When I was younger, dark room, dark screen was fine. Gets harder to focus as you age. Bright screen and room cause smaller pupils and therefore easier focusing like a pinhole camera.

For me it really depends on the situation. When I'm gaming or watching a movie, I prefer effectively no light. In fact, I built an enclosed space in my garage that is light tight. Then I have an overhead LED strip with variable intensity control. I find that programming and video calls both work best if I have a reasonable level (about 50% of what a typical office overhead would provide). I absolutely love complete darkness but after a while I start to feel like a cave troll.

Do what works for you. If it’s comfortable and you don’t notice lingering issues it’s probably fine.

I want to add something I noticed about coloring diffuse light. In an older home, the "white" walls may have yellowed a bit and bouncing light off them will color what is diffused. This sameness has a backrooms kind of feel to me. But, repainting with fresh and more-white white paint, I can bounce yellow or warm colored light and it ends up being pleasing.

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.

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.

> 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.

One slightly different approach I haven't seen mentioned here - I use grow lights in my office.

They're way brighter, so simulate sunlight better, are full spectrum, and as a bonus my plants are super happy. I use 5 of these with a diffuser: https://www.amazon.com/SANSI-Daylight-Spectrum-Sunlight-Gree...

What do you use as the diffuser? I also use these, but they're a bit too bright and I find myself shutting them off because the light isn't diffuse enough.

Do you wear sunscreen?

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 it was a few years ago and can't find it anymore.

It might be time for me to upgrade my monitors (they are very old). I never thought too much about flicker, etc. Does anyone have any good recommendations for just decent 24" monitors for coding?

Not me, sorry. At the time I did watch a bunch of reviews on YouTube, but since the purchase I haven't kept up

I've been considering the "programmer" monitors from BenQ, but I don't know if they truly help.

[0]: https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/programming/rd280u.html

If you've got the budget for it, e-ink monitors are becoming more available recently, and I've heard that they make a huge difference for eye strain. There are still only a few companies manufacturing panels that large, and I think the framerate can be pretty jarring for anything other than text, but I have been keeping an eye out for when the prices drop.

For most people, using e-ink for general-purpose computing tasks is going to be so jarring and unpleasant that it's extremely difficult to recommend to anyone who doesn't have severe eyestrain issues and has tried and failed more typical accommodations. I adore e-ink for reading, and own several e-ink readers in various form factors, but the tradeoffs just don't make sense for a desktop computer for most people unless staring at your monitor for eight hours a day is causing you physical harm.

Maybe ask on Monitors Reddit [1], people there are usually helpful (although often very gaming-oriented, so you should make it very clear it is for coding/office work).

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Monitors/

One regret I have is buying a monitor that lacks a very high brightness setting. Not good if you have a sun-lit room.

There shouldn't be any flicker in any mode if you avoid monitors that use PWM for backlight control (which anyone who's sensitive to flicker probably should do). I was stupid enough to buy one with low frequency PWM (didn't have money for anything else at that moment) and "solved" the problem by setting brightness to 100% (which sets duty cycle to 100%), but it destroyed image quality.

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

Might just be normal mode? I know that some gaming monitors strobe the backlight in order to reduce motion blur, maybe reader mode just turns that off.

Lots of OLEDs use PWM, some at high frequencies and some not.

Place your monitor in front of or next to a window so you can look out of a window so your eyes can refocus and you can look out into the world.

Do NOT place your computer in front of a wall - this literally makes me feel depressed.

So much this!

Though were I currently live, this means looking out onto the neighbours fence. Hoping to move soon to get a betting working space.

I get these LED shop light tubes off of Amazon and put them _everywhere_. It's brighter inside than outside most days! It doesn't just help with eye strain but also mood and productivity

https://www.amazon.com/Barrina-Integrated-Fixture-Utility-El...

Are there any solutions that involve reflecting mirrors that allow you to add variation to the apparent viewing distance so your eye muscles are exercised more vs staring at the same distance for too long?

Cool idea. Would love to see prototypes of this. This is essentially what happens at an optometrists office when you go for an eye test.

The room of my house that I use as an office did not receive much sunlight from the window that faces a brick wall. I recently had a skylight installed and wow, it's been life changing. I don't even need a light on anymore during the day. I highly recommend installing a skylight to add more natural light to a room if it's possible.

Very important number about LED lights is CRI. If this number missing, I would not buy it. Typically >80 is ok, ideally >90.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

For those in UK you can get 98 CRI lighting from this company: https://www.biaslighting.co.uk/collections/medialight-mk2 Not cheap compared to the usual Amazon Chinese stuff though

Buy a Godox LA 200D light, a tall light stand on a tripod, set it up in the corner of your room, and point it up at your ceiling at an angle.

It’s like having indoor daylight.

I was wondering how practical it is to create 3D renders of your room instead of photos for the blog post.

I think I found an answer: in this case, it's insanely practical.

The reason is it's a blog of a senior designer at Shopify. He has the skills to make this easy for him, and showcasing them is smart.

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-brightness dial that nobody ever touches. Turns out if you turn that way down, reducing the contrast between you and the road, it's actually enough to get you 90% there. Because you probably don't drive a 1992 Saab (more's the pity).

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIfzUqYEkiw

My Crown Vic can be pretty dark on the inside. The problem with this is the outside light sources like other headlights, especially with certain cars like Teslas that are super bright and aim high. If anything, I feel less eye strain with more lights inside. But either way, I get a headache any time I drive for >2hr at night, haven't found any solution.

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.

It seems if you turn the dial all the way to the left on the Toyota Camry (and maybe other Toyotas and Lexuses), everything will disappear except for the gear position.

Related, the color of your dash matters, the modern backlit screens (both dash and entertainment) emit much white and blue light.

Mazda and Bmw (traditionally, less the last 5 years) seem to consider human ux more than others - hence orange lighting. Modern ambient (orange or green) can be nice.

You can usually turn the infotainment screen off completely at night. However, for some manufacturers, this means the screen displays black, but is still powered, ie. the backlight is on, which can be annoing.

There is a big difference between "can turn off" and "doesn't emit white or blue light in the cabin at night by default" when it comes to infotainment.

Maybe the oleds will allow manufacturers become more conscious of this in the future, but as far as I can see, BMW, Ford (Cadillac), Mb group, and Kia Hyundai, Honda are not consciously limiting their lighting colors.

This article potentially answers a question I've had for a long time: why I find working at night more pleasant than working during daytime. I thought I was just a night owl.

But actually my daytime setup relies on the sun coming in from the windows just like the author's first illustration. For night time I don't have a ceiling light so I naturally have multiple lamps scattered across the room (depending on where the outlet is) all with fabric wrapped light fixture (because they look good).

I suspect many people might be in the same situation.

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)

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.

You could potentially save on glasses and LASIK. You could also potentially use the same projector to watch TV and videos.

I think the arrangement from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42232741 should become more popular. Focus distance is absolutely an issue, and you can probably convince yourself of that by just staring out a window or across the room for a while and comparing the eyestrain you get from that versus reading a book for an extended period of time.

User-tested high CRI bulbs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12jj1A6PNjHmWbFNu0FSi...

EPA Energy Star qualified bulbs: https://downloads.energystar.gov/bi/qplist/Lamps_Qualified_P...

put 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

Just pointing your desk lamp onto the wall behind the screen goes 90% of the way and can be done everywhere if only you have your desk against a wall that's not too dark.

My biggest boons was adding a tuneable LED strip along the back side of my desk, which softly lights up the wall behind my monitors, and getting a Colorimeter.

The colorimeter in particular has been great - most monitors come eye-searingly bright out of the box, and with a white point nowhere near optimal - I calibrate all three of my displays (MBP + 2 LG 4K 27" monitors) to 6500k, 120cd/m2 which for me is tolerable and leaves my eyes not feeling so tired at the end of the day.

From my experience, if you're going to do just one thing in this list, it should be taking breaks. It's also the only thing you can reliably control even in the office.

> An even, diffused lighting environment is best for the eyes

indeed. i am unsure where the love for those "spotlights" embedded into the ceiling comes from. every time i enter a room that has them i want to crouch like gollum. the only thing they seem to do is blind you.

indirect lights can be expensive and hard to find though. i built 12 hanging lamps that illuminate the ceiling instead of the floor myself, which saves a few thousand bucks but was unfortunately more work than expected.

Ceiling downlights can me (for most people and most purposes) quite nice, but they need to actually be spotlights. If you have a light that is close to being a point source (very bright per unit solid angle), which includes most lights aimed at people, you want that light to avoid emitting light at an angle that you're likely to be able to see. So a downlight on a ceiling should emit very little light past an angle of, say, 45 degrees or even less from vertical. After all, for most purposes (but not bedrooms when in bed!), you are not looking straight up, and a light that's shining on the top of your head or even on the tops of your eyebrows is not irritating your eyes. But a bright light, shining at you, that's in your field of view when looking horizontally, can be extremely annoying.

The office-style solution is big diffuse ceiling lights. The easy but rather inefficient solution is indirect lighting. The expensive solution is to use high-end architectural lights that have a trim or lens design that makes the light source almost invisible from shallow angles. An excellent and cheap solution is to use highly recessed lights with standard, inexpensive designs. A PAR30S lamp in an ordinary (not "shallow") 5" or 6" ceiling can, with a trim that allows it to be installed at a respectable recess, can work very nicely. (That "S" is important. The whole point is that it's a "short neck" light, so the bottom surface is farther above the ceiling. And the PAR part is important, too -- PARs are reflectors, not floods, and they emit over a narrower angle.)

Here's a decent article about it:

https://www.agcled.com/blog/glare-and-ugr.html

As far as I can tell, this is almost completely ignored for residential and small business lighting, especially with LED lights from places like Costco and Home Depot. You do not want a bright light that emits over 180 degrees installed in plane with your ceiling.

Doing it with hanging lamps is a clever solution. Doing it indirectly is the goal. There's one company out of the UK making super high end LED diffusers that can be precisely controlled - both the amount of light and the direction. Can't remember the company but it was similar to this: https://www.acalbfi.com/technologies/photonics/optical-compo...

Mind sharing how you made the hanging lamps? I'm currently designing a new house and was thinking of doing a similar setup. Any guidance would be appreciated.

1.) get an appropriate bowl of a form/color you like. the required size differs whether you want to use 1 or 3 led-bulbs. i used this ( https://edelrostshop.de/de-at/products/rost-metall-schale-o-... ) and painted it white (got them to deliver 20 pieces without rust). the bowl should be less than 2 kg. the point here is to face the light exclusively to the ceiling while preventing you ever seeing the light sources directly.

2.) mount a lamp suspension on the ceiling, something like this ( https://www.amazon.de/dp/B094HX42PN/ ).

3.) if you want 3 lightbulbs, just screw in a a 3-way splitter ( e.g. https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07VH7KKCH/ ). the benefit here is more and more upwards-facing light

4.) the final part is connecting the bowl to the lamp suspension. i just made 4 screws in the suspension and 4 holes in the bowls and connected with basically-invisible nylon strings. getting the nylon strings to be all the same size was tricky but doable.

I find that having a desk up against the wall (as in the diagram) makes lighting odd, and creates a claustrophobic feeling (like you're being punished by being made to face the wall or a corner).

Facing away from doors is also psychologically unsettling, because people can sneak up on you without warning. This can cause distraction, as part of your attention to be pulled away from the task at hand by the vigilance of your subconscious.

If the room in the illustrations is what you have to work with, consider sometimes putting the desk in front of the window, facing out.

When the sun is not line-of-sight, and you don't have any bright flares off other objects (like car windows or chrome).

That gives you natural light, it should be even left/right, and it happens to be awesome fill light for looking good on videoconf.

You can also glance around your monitor to refocus at a distance, frequently.

This is an underrated comment.

A desk positioned so that you can view things beyond it at a distance has been the best remedy for my eyestrain, and I say that as someone using cheap oversized 1080p screens. An expensive high DPI monitor might be more convenient than rearranging a whole room to reorient an office desk, but in my experience, the value it provides is fantastic. No matter the quality of the monitor, if my ability to adjust my focus is impeded by a room's layout, then my eyes will feel the same strain they'd have if I'd been staring at a wall all day at an arm's length distance.

Interestingly, the photo search results I get for "desk ceo" all show the desk oriented in the ideal way (i.e., not facing a wall): https://kagi.com/images?q=desk+ceo

switching to light editor themes that more closely matches ambient lighting will reduce eye fatigue a ton too

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.

I love we have a society where we are approaching AGI and a popular story is humans who figure out how to light their home office

> approaching AGI

I don't see how we're approaching AGI? I think an argument can now be made that it seems possible. But I would need a convincing argument that LLMs are anything more than an early stepping stone.

I'm surprised there is no mention of circadian rythms or the effects of artificial lights on us

> and it can provide us with much needed vitamin D

Sunlight through your windows won't have any effect on your Vitamin D. The Vitamin D is made by your body in response to UVB radiation, which you get when exposed to the sun.

But most windows made in the last 50 years block UVB.

I had a lot of problems with eye strain and was always careful having good lightning around me.

What solved it for me was going dark mode everywhere. I tried everything from terminal glasses to f.lux for reducing blue light. Since then I never had any issues.

I don't wear any glasses, but I still suffer from eye strain, especially from when I started my software engineering work years ago. I have also tried a lot of devices and medicines, but working long hours is just not good, and taking breaks is very important. So, I have even developed a macOS app to remind myself to take breaks. It is available on the Mac App Store now https://apps.apple.com/us/app/totalpause/id6482185943?mt=12, I hope it helps.

I'm working on something like the lamp depicted in the images[0]. It's bright, diffuse, dimmable, flicker free, and high CRI.

[0]https://getbrighter.com

How would this compare to something like the Godox LA 200D, which claims an output of 100,000 lumens? I use two of these lights on tall stands pointed at my ceiling, which seems to work very well

They claim 101,000 lux, not lumens. Lux is light per square meter (roughly), lumens is total light output. The closer you get to the source, the higher the lux will be, so it's hard to compare lux equally. Based on their 230W power draw and typical COB efficiency, I'd guess it's 20,000-35,000 lumens.

Tldr, we're brighter, fanless, have adjustable color temperature, smart home compatible, and more aesthetic.

Appreciate the response!

Please help me understand a $1500 lamp...

It's so expensive.. And it uses a whopping 500W. Why not then just use a regular halogen standing floor lamp?

You get 6x less lumens/watt with a halogen lamp

I use screenbars (BenQ, Mi, etc.) and found them extremely helpful, in terms of reducing eye strain and leaving spaces for other desktop setups (I currently have no lamp on my desk).

Are there any communities of others online dealing with general eye strain? Or other blogs / videos that have helped others? I have had chronic eye pain for a while now and could really benefit from hearing what has helped others. I have not found doctors to be helpful

I have a pretty normal Dell office monitor but not sure if I would benefit from an upgrade. I have relatively normal overhead lighting and try to take breaks or use a screen reader as much as I can, but haven't had much luck reducing pain.

The standard 60Hz refresh rate of monitors is unlikely to produce any eyestrain. The refresh rate of the backlight could produce eyestrain and headaches.

Unfortunately, the exact frequency of the PWM used for backlight isn't often mentioned in the specs.

In general, anything above 500 Hz is better as some people get headaches even for 250 Hz.

P. S. The linked website is poor on details and not worth reading.

Rtings.com measures PWM frequency[1] as part of their reviews.

1. https://www.rtings.com/monitor/tests/motion/image-flicker

There's a good chance its due to dry eye. If so, you need to blink more. Get an eye compress (heat it up in microwave, toss on eyes for 10 minutes). That can help release oils from glands onto your eyes. Artificial tears can help with comfort but wont solve the underlying problem--we don't blink (enough) when we focus on screens that are close to our face.

I don't think that is the case but I could be wrong. My eyes do not feel dry at all and drops or hot washclothes haven't made much difference. Maybe that compress you speak of is better though

Hot wash clothes don't maintain the heat long enough to release the oils. Decent eye compresses are $20. Here's a decent one. Certainly others work too.

https://www.amazon.com/Bruder-Activated-Recommended-Professi...

I got a fancier one from Tear Restore that has little cut outs, so I can see while using it (instead of keeping eyes closed). It may not work quite as good as the bruder, but it lets me get things done while using it.

https://ledstrain.org/

I know of such a community: https://ledstrain.org/

While it's informative, I would proceed with caution. Many users there indulge in a level of obsession that is not helpful. The basics of reducing eye strain are actually simple:

1. Don't use a display at unnecessarily high brightness. 2. Make sure there's plenty of natural light around you (avoid LEDs if possible). 3. Take frequent breaks and look off in the distance. (If you're in a social setting, assume an air of mystery with your ponderous gaze.) 4. Reduce your level of stress. Stress makes nothing better and everything worse. Enjoy life! Stretch regularly to reduce muscle tension in the body. 5. Probably diet helps, but that's a whole can of worms. Don't obsess over it, but try to reduce inflammatory foods.

Many monitors allow adjustment of the individual R G and B components. This has been the single biggest help for me. I typically use R 45 G 35 B 15 or at night R 25 G 15 B 0 and that has helped me stay productive for longer without eye strain.

Using a projector and/or TV as a monitor, at a distance, may help. I've been doing this for a while now, and it works for me.

Great set of suggestions.

I experience a fair amount of over lighting on some calls due to my monitor (a 42" Dell thing, maybe sitting 50-60cm away). Most things I use have dark mode, but when someone shares their screen and it's pure white I end up looking like an apparition. Does anyone have any additional suggestions where the monitor itself is the cause of the excess light? Is distance a helping factor (someone else mentioned 1.5m away from their 85" TV)?

That’s really tough. For me I use a display that has an ambient light sensor so it matches my surroundings, that might help a bit.

Ideally your environment is balancing the light level of your monitor (maybe 50% black level) so you can have something that works if it’s a white display window or dark.

I use similar standing lights with diffusers in every non-door corner, and I agree that the quality of light matters, though that doesn't mean it has to be expensive. I used E27 bulbs with RA 95, only 1521 lumen each but the light is much better than the 2500 lumen bulbs I had before. They were very cheap at a discount store (Action in the Netherlands). I use a remote to turn the whole group in a room on.

Interesting! What type of diffusers are you using?

Sooooo, I always saw offices with neon bulbs, so, very very cold light (well, actually "hotter" in Kelvin degrees...) and very bright. So I copied this in my home office, which is a 12 square meter (130 square foot) room with 6x 7000K bulbs, each emitting about 800 lumen. Am I doing totally wrong, according to TFA? Should I replace them with warm bulbs? I'usong GU10 bulbs.

Color temperature preferences tend to be very dependent on the person. I personally find warm color to be the most relaxing but find myself straining when viewing a screen in too warm of an environment. Warm tones will tend to slightly desaturate a picture and my eyes and brain strain to "compensate" for the desaturation. I find it best to keep my office environments a bit warm, but still on the cold side.

This article is just what worked for me. Some people are more light color sensitive, if you like your cool lighting and a lot of light and it works - go for it.

I wasn't judging anyone, sorry if it felt judgemental. I was genuinely asking, because cold, bright light is all I experienced in a workplace and when I replicated it at home, I didn't feel any particular issue with my vision. But I also tend to act a bit like a mule or workhorse in these cases, carrying on anyway until I realize it's actually harmful.

That's why I was asking.

I started leaving most warm nightshift on MacOS and iOS on 24/7. Made a huge difference. Now when I see a normal not warm screen it hurts.

Light on my desk for light under the monitor, light from behind me which bounces off the angled ceiling and only light themes no dark themes.

Note that most IPS displays have 0 PWM flicker. I use a couple IPS gaming monitors. IPS displays look better for code vs OLED anyway, IMO.

Yep, I use IPS monitors for this reason. Gotta avoid PWM to help prevent the headaches I experienced on other types. IPS looks really good too, so that works out.

Dimmable, adjustable color-temperature bulbs are one of those things which seem a bit unnecessary at first, but they really do make a big difference for quality of life. I use Wifi-enabled globes. On the plus side they have beautiful aesthetics but on the downside my lightglobes are probably going to get hacked and join a botnet.

I do the same, got a few IKEA ones and placed them in all rooms and table/floor lamps. Now it gives me a lot of flexibility on how I want my lights to look and feel

I think something that gets kind of buried in these discussions is that the majority of this lighting stuff is psychological. 60hz lighting doesn't strain anything. Sharp shadows don't strain anything. Colors don't strain anything.

Too bright is bad. Too close is bad. Beyond that, it's preference.

I recently picked up a monitor light and the change is huge, I wish I did it sooner. My rule of thumb is that I obviously don't point lights in my eyes, only on camera. no overhead light, but lamps are great because they direct light away from you and bounce it around the surfaces of the room.

I also found a monitor light to be a great addition.

I am sensitive to bad CRI and color temp(3100K FTW). I really like the cheap "torchiere", floor lamp/uplights on Amazon but am finally giving up on them due to issues with poor CRI. I find standard screw-in LEDs from Philips to be the best, easily available source of light.

Amen. Honestly the IKEA lamps are the best - super cheap and you can swap out the bulbs with high quality dimmable philips. What torchiers are you swapping to?

I hate that ikea uses the smaller sockets for so many of their lamps.

I'm still shopping for floor lamps. Too many of them come with a reading light which I don't want .

> When it comes to light brightness, too much is just as problematic as too little

Recently moved into a house with on/off light switches. Having the ceiling lights on full brightness was downright oppressive. I installed dimmer switches, and it's so much nicer it's hard to really convey.

How do you source lightbulbs? I have yet to find a reliable LED bulb that doesn't hum or flicker on a dimmer despite being advertised as "dimmable" . . .

that's probably a problem with your dimmer switch, not the bulbs.

Explain. Isn't a dimmer switch just a variable resistor? Do you need fancy dimmer switches if you want them to work with LED bulbs?

A dimmer switch for an LED light is different from a dimmer switch for a non-LED light. If you try to use an LED light with a “normal” dimmer, it won’t work well.

Not 100% sure of the details but I think it’s more like a digital pwm system.

I had dimmers installed when we rewired our house and I thought they were rubbish. Replaced those with Varilight v-pro and they were noisy. Discovered that I could switch between leading edge and trailing edge modes (or something like that) and the sound went away. Love them now.

There's differences. e.g. MOSFET vs TRIAC

Zooz (popular zwave manufacturer) has some interesting tidbits on their homepage.

https://www.support.getzooz.com/kb/article/1103-zen72-vs-zen...

"The ZEN77 Dimmer is recommended for 3-way and 4-way installations since you won't need to rewire your other switches in the set-up, you can simply replace the main switch with direct connection to power with the ZEN77 dimmer.

This model can control up to 100 Watts of LED bulbs but we don't recommend using it in installations with chandeliers or large groups of lights over 6 bulbs. Version 1.0 and 2.0 of the ZEN77 (700 series Z-Wave chip) were MOSFET dimmers so if your bulbs work better with trailing-edge (or reverse-phase) drivers, those versions of the model worked best. Version 3.0 of the ZEN77 (700 series Z-Wave chip) is now a TRIAC dimmer so if your bulbs work better with leading-edge drivers, this model will work better. The 800 series version of the ZEN77 is also a TRIAC dimmer. Why We Changed to all TRIAC: We found that newer LED bulbs dimmed better with TRIAC dimmers, and considering limited availability for MOSFETS, we decided to transfer the ZEN77 model to TRIAC as well."

If a dimmer switch were a resistor, it wouldn't work at all with LED lights (the AC->DC converters in them don't just lower the current they provide when the AC input gets lower).

In incandescent lights, a variable resistor would burn a lot of power unnecessarily, so instead they use phase cut dimming (with a triac switch) where the dimmer cuts out a variable portion of the AC cycle. That way you reduce the effective duty cycle of the power without burning the energy. This works well for incandescents because the filament glow scales nicely with the with the power being delivered to the bulb. It works poorly with (some) LED bulbs because the turn on/off time is slow relative to the power cycle, and the LED brightness itself doesn't just scale nicely with the current from the rectifier.

A dimmer is either a "phase-cut" device, either (commonly) forward-phase/leading-edge or (less commonly) reverse-phase/trailing-edge. At all times, it's either on or off, and it cycles between on and off once per half wave, so it produces 120 pulses per second. A good-quality light fixture will smooth out that waveform and produce approximately constant output.

The worst choice is a no-neutral-required forward-phase dimmer. Neutral-required forward-phase dimmers are usually better. Reverse-phase dimmers can be excellent for LEDs (but disastrous for magnetic transformers) and always require neutrals. Some dimmers can operate in both modes.

Old-school dimmer switches were rheostats, and they got hot.

Pretty much all dimmers now are TRIAC-based, which is a semiconductor that turns on partway through the AC wave, then turns off at the next zero-crossing, repeat. It chops the waveform so the light only gets power for a fraction of the time.

An incandescent bulb works largely the same with either type. (You may hear the filament "sing" on a TRIAC dimmer since the fast-rising waveform edge has a lot of harmonic content, but this is usually very faint.)

LED bulbs are non-dimmable by default. The typical job of a power supply is to ignore variations in the source and deliver uniform power to the load, and that's just what they do, driving the emitters at a constant brightness regardless of what the dimmer does, until it's letting through so little power that the poor thing just shuts off. Or flickers madly.

Dimmable LED bulbs are actually super tricky, because the power supply has to measure the distortions in the incoming waveform, interpret that as a dimming command, and use that to control the output to the emitters. Any jitter in the measurement sampling means the resulting brightness will bounce around. Any jitter in the waveform, which an incandescent might've ignored as long as the area-under-the-curve was equal, might be picked up by the LED power supply and misinterpreted as a changing dimming level.

It all sucks and we should abandon it immediately. LEDs should be driven with DC. But there's an awful lot of installed fixtures to keep us from that utopia.

> LEDs should be driven with DC. But there's an awful lot of installed fixtures to keep us from that utopia.

Every LED luminaire or lamp already has a DC inverter inside of it.

Also, you can get (158) 28w 2x4 LED fixtures on a single 277V 20A circuit with #12 wire, DC lighting branch is never going to happen. For reference, that will light about 12,000 square feet of space assuming 9’ AFF for ceiling height.

You buy a bunch and try them. Philips is generally reliable, but their online catalog is often out of date or incomplete, and they change their SKUs all the time.

Lutron test a lot of LED lights for compatibility with their dimmers - you can find the index here[0]. I can't imagine the performance of the LEDs listed is specific to Lutron dimmers.

[0]: https://www.lutron.com/europe/Service-Support/Pages/Technica...

I actually "solved" the problem by using remote controlled light bulbs.

I can still use the switch to turn them on and off, but I have to use the remote for dimming. Not the most elegant solution, but the dimming works flawlessly, and on my model I can also change the color temperature, which is nice, and it was actually cheaper than most "dimmable" light bulbs.

I did this too with IKEA bulbs and their remote control that you can directly pair to multiple bulbs. It works out great, and I don't have to deal with another phone app or buy a hub in my house to manage.

Buy Lutron Diva dimmers and dimmable LED lamps (you probably call them ‘bulbs’), problem solved.

For the Lutron Diva, you probably want this one: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Diva-LED-Dimmer-Switch-fo...

Philips sells dimmable LED lamps that work well.

I sell electrical work for a living and this is what I use on my own home.

If you want higher grade, commercial LED fixtures have built in drivers with heat sinks and are generally rated for 50,000 hours. Commercial dimming typically uses separate dimming conductors that carry a 0-10VDC signal.

I use Shelly dimmers as they offer you the ability to use their cloud app thing or completely roll your own including flashing new firmware into the ESP controlling the thing.

I also have Shelly but haven’t been able to flash them. Do you have a link?

Philips Ultra-Definition 60w equivalent bulbs are amazing and really reasonably priced. They also work really well with standard dimmers with extremely low flicker.

I've heard good reviews, but half of my Philips UD bulbs have died since I installed them roughly six months ago. All the bulbs in enclosed fixtures have died (despite the bulbs stating they were suitable for enclosed fixtures), and maybe 1/6th of the bulbs in open fixtures have died.

I felt the light in my 5x4 meter room was to dim so I installed 20x 1500lm lightbulbs, about 200W of LED. I've put them in two sections 6+14. I pretty much used all 20 all the time. Almost as bright as daylight in sunny day. Perceptually 6 were about half as bright as 20.

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

Nature bathing is great. But it turns out that people in hospital beds facing windows recover faster when they face nature. And, in fact, it's not the nature at all! It can be fake and just as effective. In the end, basically, it's the green.

Color therapy or chromotherapy is incorporating specific colors into your environment to evoke desired emotional states. It blows my mind how well this works, and that's why you see peach colored walls in offices.

Light works similarly. Warm vs. cool, etc. You can use light exposure to regulate mood, particularly for conditions like seasonal affective disorder (SAD). All of this is culturally-dependent but it works way better than you'd think.

Here are some of the common color associations:

1. Red Emotions: Energy, passion, excitement, strength, urgency, love, anger, aggression.

Therapeutic Use: Stimulates energy, increases heart rate, and can evoke strong emotions. Often used to combat fatigue or lethargy, but excessive use may lead to overstimulation or agitation.

2. Orange Emotions: Enthusiasm, creativity, warmth, optimism, sociability, joy.

Therapeutic Use: Encourages social interaction, boosts creativity, and uplifts mood. Often used to combat depression or feelings of loneliness.

3. Yellow Emotions: Happiness, clarity, intellect, optimism, caution, anxiety (in excess).

Therapeutic Use: Promotes mental clarity, stimulates the nervous system, and enhances focus. However, too much yellow can lead to feelings of anxiety or frustration.

4. Green Emotions: Balance, harmony, growth, renewal, calmness, peace, envy (in some contexts).

Therapeutic Use: Known for its calming and balancing effects, green is often used to reduce stress and promote relaxation. It is also associated with nature and healing.

5. Blue Emotions: Calmness, serenity, trust, stability, sadness, coldness.

Therapeutic Use: Reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and promotes relaxation. Often used in spaces meant for rest or introspection. Darker shades can evoke feelings of sadness or detachment.

6. Purple Emotions: Spirituality, luxury, creativity, mystery, introspection, wisdom.

Therapeutic Use: Encourages deep thinking, meditation, and spiritual connection. Often used to inspire creativity and self-reflection.

7. Pink Emotions: Love, compassion, nurturing, calmness, playfulness.

Therapeutic Use: Promotes feelings of warmth and comfort. Often used to reduce aggression and create a soothing environment.

8. White Emotions: Purity, clarity, simplicity, peace, emptiness, sterility.

Therapeutic Use: Creates a sense of space and cleanliness. Often used to promote mental clarity and a fresh start.

9. Black Emotions: Power, sophistication, mystery, fear, sadness, protection.

Therapeutic Use: Can evoke feelings of protection and strength but may also lead to feelings of heaviness or depression if overused.

10. Brown Emotions: Stability, reliability, warmth, comfort, dullness.

Therapeutic Use: Grounding and stabilizing, often used to create a sense of security and connection to the earth.

11. Turquoise Emotions: Calmness, clarity, communication, emotional balance.

Therapeutic Use: Combines the calming effects of blue with the rejuvenating qualities of green. Often used to promote emotional balance and clear communication.

12. Gold Emotions: Success, wealth, luxury, wisdom, optimism.

Therapeutic Use: Inspires confidence, abundance, and positivity. Often used to elevate mood and encourage a sense of achievement.

13. Silver Emotions: Modernity, sophistication, intuition, reflection, coldness.

Therapeutic Use: Encourages introspection and clarity of thought. Often used to promote a futuristic or innovative mindset.

14. Gray Emotions: Neutrality, balance, sophistication, boredom, sadness.

Therapeutic Use: Creates a sense of calm and balance but can also evoke feelings of dullness or detachment if overused.

How do you accomplish silver colored lighting?

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, sophistication, intuition, reflection, coldness, or disco fever.

Although they are both forms of environmental modification, light therapy is different than color therapy. Light therapy uses e.g. daylight to boost affect. Color therapy uses e.g. silver paint to prime cognition.

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?

Now you need to tell him also what ISS is

I know what ISS is. I just never had anyone in my circle reducing phrase "work from home" to a 3-letter acronym.

What planet do you live on? Most of us here are from Earth.

Strategically increasing the amount of light I'm exposed to was a game changer.

Turns out we're bad at gauging how much light is in our environment. Few would suspect that the amount of lux we're exposed to indoors is often far less than 1% of the lux outside. A typical corporate office has under 500 lux, vs 50k+ midday-if you're at home and haven't put much thought into the lighting situation, the lux could be in the low double digits. You can get a free app "Lux meter" to measure yours now.

We evolved to be outside a lot, and light regulates aspects of our biology. We probably shouldn't stay two orders of magnitude beneath the factory recommended exposure levels for months at a time. Hence clinical or sub-clinical SAD,sleep and mood disturbances etc [see references].

One solution is high wattage LEDs: https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/

I've had several ~250w LEDs over the years (these are huge and actually draw 250w, they aren't 250w equivalent). 250w might be overkill, and 80w is fine for me and a lot more practical. If you get one , be warned that depending on the wattage you'll probably have to build your own stand for it as most fixtures aren't rated for that high wattage.

Related to light amount is of course light timing. This may be more important than getting a steadily high amount of lux during the day. Get lots of light in the morning, and not a lot at night (just low intensity bulbs, maybe just red ones, starting 1-2h after sunset is nice). That helped my sleep a ton. Check out Huberman LAb, he talks about light amount and timing ad nauseam.

[1] Office workers sleep better and are more active with more lighting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4031400/

[2] "Day and night light exposure are associated with psychiatric disorders: an objective light study in >85,000 people" https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-023-00135-8

[3] "Time spent in outdoor light is associated with mood sleep circadian rhythm related outcomes" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8892387/

...

Dark mode FTW. Would be nice if Hacker News had one.

dark reader works well for it

The environment and the screen should have similar brightness. In the pictures in the article, the screen seems much too bright in comparison.

You are spot on! - was a limitation of my 3d rendering abilities but great point.

Would love to know how did you generate those renderings? Is it blender or something else?

It’s adobe substance stager 3d

Oh, it's CGI? I wanted to know who your housecleaner was and if I could borrow them. ;) So much cat hair...

An army of robot vacuums working tirelessly 24/7 can help.

That is, until they encounter a piece of cat excrement. :)

@jahfer what about dark mode/night mode? are you using it?

Great article.

Personally, I would prefer real images than the renders.

does anyone know if there is a phase-shifter for led lights? a way to shift each led 60hz cycle to create more-uniform light?

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r715nLvwWvE

yes but the frequency is in the same phase . e.g. if you hook up 6 lights to a high quality supply, they will oscillate in sync

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.

This was extremely useful. Thank you.

here i am no home no money no job with 8 weeks to live looking at the lord's ladder

Another tool, although I have only anecdotal evidence, is f.lux and similar software.

How about to RTO instead, to have real human interactions instead? Oh i know: a severe case of tech weirdo... sure, develop in your dev mancave instead.

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