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While you might think that you’re looking at a crisper, more pleasing
picture in a dim or otherwise darker environment, you’re just forcing
your eyes to work that much harder to process extreme differences in
contrast. And a similar situation happens when you set up your screen in
a location that creates a ton of glare: not only does your picture look
horrible, but all that light mucks up the quality of your picture and
forces your eyes to do a lot more refocusing to achieve better clarity.
So if you’re sitting at a computer under fluorescent lights and you aren’t at work, just stop: This kind of overhead lighting is one of the harshest environments for your eyes to deal with.
The
best setup? Plain ol’ natural light, best deployed in the form of a
window angled perpendicular to your computer screen. You might be
tempted to slap your monitor or laptop in front of a huge window to
enjoy some scenery while you work, but the brightness of your exterior
view could stress your eyes out. You could always use blinds or curtains
to limit the amount of light coming in when it’s especially bothersome,
but that kind of defeats the point of the view, doesn’t it?
When placing your screen perpendicular to your natural light source, you
want to make sure that you’re balancing ambience with glare reduction:
Angle your display so that extra light isn’t bouncing off your screen.
And take some time to play around with your PC setup; a few minutes now
will save you countless hours of agony later. Again, blinds or curtains
can be an eye-saving device if the sun is really giving you trouble
during certain hours of the day.
You’ll want to supplement this natural light (or lack thereof, as the
day turns to evening) with artificial lighting. And overhead
lighting—even incandescent—still isn’t the best option due to its
potential for glare. But you shouldn’t go to the other extreme, either.
Resist the urge to purchase the classic “spotlight” desk lamp and slap
its narrow cone of light somewhere on your desktop. Remember, you’re
also trying to avoid sharp differences in contrast.
You don’t need that much light around a monitor or laptop screen, and
what you pick needs only to supply indirect light in a general area
around your desk and display. A small lamp on a desk that creates a
pleasant diffusion of light behind your display and prevents glare is
great; a full-sized floor lamp can also work wonders, provided it
physically fits into your particular desk setup. As for bulbs, consider
those of the natural light (and low wattage) variety: If you need more
brightness, switch to higher wattages or add another light source.
Advanced Lighting
If you’re looking for a setup that looks a little bit cooler than a tiny
lamp on your desk—or if your particular desktop setup has no room for
any bulkier lighting equipment -- you might want to consider trying out
some bias lighting.
You’ve probably seen the concept before, likely on a Philips HDTV with
ambient lighting (or as Philips brands it, “Ambilight”). The gist is
simple: LED lights attached to the rear of your monitor blast the
background with colored light (desktop systems only—unless you really
want to silly up your laptop), helping to reduce glare in dimly lit
environments, to make your picture appear sharper, and to transform your
boring ol’ monitor into a glowing beacon of cool.
As Sound and Vision’s Timothy Seppala describes the benefits of bias lighting, in an interview with Ars Technica,
“It works because it provides enough ambient light in the viewing area
that your pupils don't have to dilate as far. This makes for less
eyestrain when a flashbang gets thrown your way or a bolt of lightning
streams across the screen.” Tim actually wrote a great guide to getting the most out of your HDTV for PCWorld
that includes some tips on lighting your home theater for optimal movie
watching, and you should definitely check it out if you're a serious PC
enthusiast seeking to optimize your display.
When it comes to PC building, though, the problem with bias lighting is
that few devices and software combinations exist that will allow you to
achieve the perfect setup: ambient lighting that changes to match the
colors appearing on your screen. We’ve had a lot of luck with Mad Catz’s
Cyborg Gaming Lights. They’re a bit pricey at $100, but you get two
little lighting modules that contain three LEDs (red, green, and blue)
for creating any color you’re looking at.
You just need to plug the lights into two of your system’s free USB
ports (after plugging the lights’ power adapter into the wall), stash
them behind your monitor, angle the lights up toward the wall, and fire
up a software utility. You can then pick the color that you want to live
behind your screen or set your lights to slowly rotate through a series
of colors. You can also have the lights dynamically switch their
appearance based on whatever happens to be on your screen—be it a game, a
movie, or a picture.
If you’re looking for a more inexpensive way to build bias lighting into your desktop monitor, you can always pick up Antec’s Halo 6 LED Bias Lighting Kit.
For a mere $13, you can slap a strip of six white LEDs to the rear of
your display. These lights—or a similar style that you can pick up at
your local IKEA (Ledberg or Dioder)—aren’t going to modulate to fit
whatever’s on your screen. But at least you’ll be able to reap the
benefits of bias lighting without breaking your bank account.
A bias lighting strip that you would attach to the rear of your display.
Beyond Lighting
Other tricks you can employ to reduce the harmful effects of extended
computer use on your eyeballs include installing little apps to remind
yourself to take a much-needed eye break. Chrome users can grab the
extension Gimme a Break! and Firefox fans can hit up the simple Auto Timer
extension to schedule some rest time for tired eyeballs. For every 20
minutes you spend staring at a screen, you need only to focus your eyes
on something else for 20 seconds -- that’s not so hard, is it?
The software fun doesn’t end there. Odds are good that you’re running
your display at fairly high brightness and contrast levels, as monitors
are sometimes shipped with factory-default settings that use inordinate
amounts of brightness to convince you that the picture is awesome. Not
good. You’ll want to fire up the Lagom LCD monitor test pages and use
their instructions (or our helpful guide)
to set your monitor’s settings to their correct levels. Why blast your
eyes with excessively bright light if you don’t have to?
Your monitor’s color temperature can also adversely affect your eyes after prolonged periods of staring. An app like F.Lux
(click on the Download link at the top of the site) will automatically
adjust your monitor’s temperature to match the time: Cooler lighting
during the day, mimicking the temperature of common daylight, and warmer
lighting in the evening, when “you probably shouldn't be looking at the
sun,” says F.Lux.
Finally, you can also opt for a pair of geektastic computer glasses to
help you handle your display temperature situation and reduce screen
glare—we’re speaking specifically of Gunnar Optiks’ line of Advanced Computer Eyeware (the company's term, not ours).
Gunnar Optiks claims that its glasses also help increase the moisture
within your eyes—a function commonly performed by blinking, which one
tends to do much less when focusing on
a computer screen. We can’t say whether Gunnar’s glasses turn eyeballs
into swimming pools, but we did tend to notice less eye fatigue (and
didn’t seem to have the same headaches as before) after a few marathon
computing sessions when equipped with its glasses. Their yellow tint
does take some getting used to, however!
