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:<p>* Use diffuse light. This usually means multiple light sources bouncing and diffusing light off surfaces (ceilings, walls, etc) or diffusers.<p>* Minimize shadows. Shadows lead to contrast which can lead to eye strain. Use multiple, maybe directional, light sources to illuminate shadows.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>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.<p>"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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>This is why dry eyes is on the rise. Remember to blink!<p>I actually built a little web app to count my blinks. See <a href="https://dryeyestuff.com/" rel="nofollow">https://dryeyestuff.com/</a>. Not perfect, just a prototype. 100% free.
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.<p>It worked very well. Every day felt like summer.<p>I quickly learned to turn off the sun and go back to regular lighting around 5pm.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>For working at home, for many years, the combination has been great.
The natural light and diffuse light are good tips.<p>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.<p>1.5m is the midpoint of focus for the muscles in your eyes.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I am in fact a plant.
<i>Monitor brightness down</i>, 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.<p>And of course <i>turn the lights on</i> and/or open a window. No more cave coding.<p>My other suggestion is sunglasses for every moment you spend in sunlight. This makes a huge difference.<p>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.
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.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting</a>
0) Yes, an evenly lit workspace is essential for any work.<p>0.1) Buy more lamps -- nothing fancy, ideally second hand, <i>always</i> 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.<p>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) -- <i>go to an optometrist</i> 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.<p>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.<p>2.1) Spend time calibrating and adjusting your display/s, whatever it is.<p>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.<p>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 <i>it is less significant than the others</i>.<p>[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)<p>[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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>In about the span of a week I went from "normal" eyes to extreme eye strain, pain and light sensitivity.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
One slightly different approach I haven't seen mentioned here - I use grow lights in my office.<p>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: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/SANSI-Daylight-Spectrum-Sunlight-Greenhouse/dp/B07BRKG7X1/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/SANSI-Daylight-Spectrum-Sunlight-Gree...</a>
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.<p>I wonder if OLEDs will be even better since they shouldn't flicker during productivity (from what I read at least).<p>[1] was one of the LG ultrawide 34" but it was a few years ago and can't find it anymore.
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.<p>Do NOT place your computer in front of a wall - this literally makes me feel depressed.
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<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Barrina-Integrated-Fixture-Utility-Electric/dp/B08B4LCPTV/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Barrina-Integrated-Fixture-Utility-El...</a>
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?
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.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index</a>
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.<p>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.<p>I think I found an answer: in this case, it's insanely practical.<p>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.<p>I used to get terrible eye strain, causing fatigue and sleepiness. Obviously not good.<p>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]<p>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).<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIfzUqYEkiw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIfzUqYEkiw</a>
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.<p>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).<p>I suspect many people might be in the same situation.
On the topic of WFH eye strain but less on lighting.<p>There was a post a while back where the author proposed using a laser projector as a means of reducing eye strain.<p>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).<p>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)
User-tested high CRI bulbs: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12jj1A6PNjHmWbFNu0FSisEztir7izxAhqw3ebxPLCZA/edit" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12jj1A6PNjHmWbFNu0FSi...</a><p>EPA Energy Star qualified bulbs: <a href="https://downloads.energystar.gov/bi/qplist/Lamps_Qualified_Product_List.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://downloads.energystar.gov/bi/qplist/Lamps_Qualified_P...</a>
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<p>no lights shining into your monitor , those just create reflections and make the screen harder to see<p>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.<p>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<p>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.<p>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.
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).<p>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.<p>When the sun is not line-of-sight, and you don't have any bright flares off other objects (like car windows or chrome).<p>That gives you natural light, it should be even left/right, and it happens to be awesome fill light for looking good on videoconf.<p>You can also glance around your monitor to refocus at a distance, frequently.
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.
> and it can provide us with much needed vitamin D<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/totalpause/id6482185943?mt=12">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/totalpause/id6482185943?mt=12</a>, 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.<p>[0]<a href="https://getbrighter.com" rel="nofollow">https://getbrighter.com</a>
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<p>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.
Great set of suggestions.<p>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)?
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.
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.
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 think something that gets kind of buried in these discussions is that the majority of this lighting stuff is psychological. 60hz lighting doesn't <i>strain</i> anything. Sharp shadows don't <i>strain</i> anything. Colors don't <i>strain</i> anything.<p>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 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.
> When it comes to light brightness, too much is just as problematic as too little<p>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.
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.
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.
Strategically increasing the amount of light I'm exposed to was a game changer.<p>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.<p>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].<p>One solution is high wattage LEDs: <a href="https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/" rel="nofollow">https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>[1] Office workers sleep better and are more active with more lighting: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4031400/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4031400/</a><p>[2] "Day and night light exposure are associated with psychiatric disorders: an objective light study in >85,000 people" <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-023-00135-8" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-023-00135-8</a><p>[3] "Time spent in outdoor light is associated with mood sleep circadian rhythm related outcomes" <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8892387/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8892387/</a><p>...
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.