[HN Gopher] How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
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How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
Author : jahfer
Score : 610 points
Date : 2025-01-22 20:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (rustle.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (rustle.ca)
| michaelteter wrote:
| This is another +1 for WFH. Many office environments have
| terrible lighting, and there's very little you can do about it.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| The over-bright lighting, monitor glare, and eye strain are a
| favorite conversation topic at my workplace since RTO.
| toddmorey wrote:
| 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.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Same. Though mine got left off for a long time which was
| great.
| xdennis wrote:
| 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.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| 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).
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Amen. I wear a ballcap at the office.
| Twirrim wrote:
| 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.
| mjcohen wrote:
| 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.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| Oh god they just replaced our horrible fluorescent tubes with
| dazzling white LED. From bad to worse.
| matsemann wrote:
| 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.
| Carrok wrote:
| > 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.
| joelfried wrote:
| 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" . . .
| adhoc_slime wrote:
| that's probably a problem with your dimmer switch, not the
| bulbs.
| gruez wrote:
| 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?
| airblade wrote:
| 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.
| aidos wrote:
| 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.
| rb2k_ wrote:
| 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."
| InitialLastName wrote:
| 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.
| amluto wrote:
| 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.
| myself248 wrote:
| 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.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > 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.
| amluto wrote:
| 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.
| boomskats wrote:
| 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...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 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.
| jerlam wrote:
| 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.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| 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.
| MisterTea wrote:
| 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.
| Carrok wrote:
| I also have Shelly but haven't been able to flash them.
| Do you have a link?
| rusty-ux wrote:
| Philips Ultra-Definition 60w equivalent bulbs are amazing and
| really reasonably priced. They also work really well with
| standard dimmers with extremely low flicker.
| slavik81 wrote:
| 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.
| scotty79 wrote:
| 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.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| 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.
| wvenable wrote:
| 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?
| marcyb5st wrote:
| Not me, sorry. At the time I did watch a bunch of reviews on
| YouTube, but since the purchase I haven't kept up
| lawn wrote:
| 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
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| 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.
| lazerwalker wrote:
| 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.
| skirmish wrote:
| 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/
| energy123 wrote:
| One regret I have is buying a monitor that lacks a very high
| brightness setting. Not good if you have a sun-lit room.
| homebrewer wrote:
| 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.
| hammock wrote:
| What is reader mode and how do I activate it? Is reader mode a
| low refresh rate?
| zyxin wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Lots of OLEDs use PWM, some at high frequencies and some not.
| adhoc_slime wrote:
| 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.
| wvenable wrote:
| I also found a monitor light to be a great addition.
| C-Loftus wrote:
| 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.
| kanbankaren wrote:
| 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.
| kanbankaren wrote:
| P. S. The linked website is poor on details and not worth
| reading.
| JoshuaEN wrote:
| Rtings.com measures PWM frequency[1] as part of their
| reviews.
|
| 1. https://www.rtings.com/monitor/tests/motion/image-flicker
| camhart wrote:
| 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.
| C-Loftus wrote:
| 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
| camhart wrote:
| 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.
| lucg wrote:
| https://ledstrain.org/
| marcinreal wrote:
| 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.
| nozonozon wrote:
| 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.
| plun9 wrote:
| 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.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| switching to light editor themes that more closely matches
| ambient lighting will reduce eye fatigue a ton too
| camhart wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| Interesting. Could an external stimulus trigger a subconscious
| blink?
| camhart wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| 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
| DonHopkins wrote:
| 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...
| dpig_ wrote:
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > 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.
| freefaler wrote:
| 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.
| mjcohen wrote:
| When you get old enough, your eyes stop focussing.
| amadeusw wrote:
| 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.
| humblepie wrote:
| 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.
| Joeri wrote:
| 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.
| dmd wrote:
| Cool web app but doesn't work unless I take my glasses off,
| sadly.
| mh- wrote:
| 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.
| binary_slinger wrote:
| Another tool, although I have only anecdotal evidence, is f.lux
| and similar software.
| dinkblam wrote:
| > 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.
| amluto wrote:
| 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.
| rusty-ux wrote:
| 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...
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| 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.
| dinkblam wrote:
| 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.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| 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.
| toddmorey wrote:
| 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.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| 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!
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| 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.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > 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.
| c0balt wrote:
| > 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.
| scns wrote:
| KDE does too
| rubicks wrote:
| Can confirm https://github.com/jonls/redshift works
| great; been using it for years.
| onli wrote:
| 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.
| teslabox wrote:
| 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.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| 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...
| onli wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What do I need to preserve night vision for? Unless I'm
| using my computer to help stargaze, I would rather have
| color graphics.
| vijucat wrote:
| 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.
| wyager wrote:
| 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.
| wonger_ wrote:
| 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| These guys do very high quality lighting aimed at homes
| and offices: https://www.waveformlighting.com/
| namibj wrote:
| 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.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| 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.
| wyager wrote:
| Yuji looks quite good, thanks. I need to see if I can
| integrate this with my DMX/Zigbee lighting control.
| imp0cat wrote:
| 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/
| wyager wrote:
| 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.
| toddmorey wrote:
| using surplus cinema lighting equipment is genius.
| wyager wrote:
| 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.
| sysworld wrote:
| 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).
| amarcheschi wrote:
| 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
| esafak wrote:
| It's hard enough to get the CRI out of manufacturers. I've
| never seen any other measure of light quality reporter
| ever.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Waveform lighting publishes their reports.
| gsck wrote:
| CRI is usually only reported on professional grade lamps
| (Theatre, Film/TV) you'll almost never find it reported on
| anything below that.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Some consumer bulbs at least used to have it listed on
| their packaging.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| 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!
| walterbell wrote:
| Well done! How did you figure out 3000K replacement part
| numbers for each SMD?
| gehwartzen wrote:
| 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...
| pkolaczk wrote:
| 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 ;)
| gehwartzen wrote:
| 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?
| tecleandor wrote:
| 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
| walterbell wrote:
| _> some of my friends_
|
| Lucky friends! Maybe repair shops could offer customized
| interior lighting as an aftermarket service.
| tecleandor wrote:
| 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
| teslabox wrote:
| 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.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| Absolutely! That was my initial idea as well. Glad to
| know it's an option
| gsck wrote:
| 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 PS7 https://shopwl.com/rosco-
| roscolux-3408-roscosun-1-2-cto/ you can probably find it
| cheaper just by searching Rosco 3408
| imp0cat wrote:
| How do you feel about LED headlights (assuming your car has
| them)? Great for safety or too bright and tiring?
| close04 wrote:
| 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.
| ropejumper wrote:
| The cold LED headlights also strain your eyes more as the
| driver. It's much less comfortable to look at IMO.
| close04 wrote:
| 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?
| ropejumper wrote:
| 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.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| 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
| ssl-3 wrote:
| 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.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| 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.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > 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.
| sumea wrote:
| 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.
| walterbell wrote:
| 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.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| 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.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| 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.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| 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.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| 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.
| vvladymyrov wrote:
| 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.
| bmelton wrote:
| 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.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| 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
| Aerroon wrote:
| 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.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| 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
| :-)
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >* 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.
| anilakar wrote:
| 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.
| nluken wrote:
| 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.
| empressplay wrote:
| You can have both though, overhead white lighting for the day
| and lower temperature lamps for the evening. It's not a binary
| choice.
| jen729w wrote:
| 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
| iforgot22 wrote:
| 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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| smileysteve wrote:
| 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.
| imp0cat wrote:
| 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.
| smileysteve wrote:
| 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.
| aunagar wrote:
| Would love to know how did you generate those renderings? Is it
| blender or something else?
| rusty-ux wrote:
| It's adobe substance stager 3d
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Oh, it's CGI? I wanted to know who your housecleaner was and
| if I could borrow them. ;) So much cat hair...
| imp0cat wrote:
| An army of robot vacuums working tirelessly 24/7 can help.
|
| That is, until they encounter a piece of cat excrement. :)
| bensandcastle wrote:
| 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.
| frabert wrote:
| 85" @ 1.5m is insanely big for me, do you not get sore having
| to dart your eyes about to read the corners?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| 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
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| 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.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| 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.
| neves wrote:
| I made a glasses with the focus optimized for 1.5m. A lot
| easier on my eyes for working than my progressive lenses.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| How did you go about that? Can you just take your
| prescription someplace and have them made?
| DavidVoid wrote:
| 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.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I used to work in the optical industry, that's not what
| computer glasses are, they are just blue blocker lenses.
| walterbell wrote:
| Any lens can be customized for desired focal length,
| including distance, intermediate (e.g. computer) or
| closeup/reading.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Right. It's an industry term though and doesn't have
| anything to do with focal length.
| mattclarkdotnet wrote:
| 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
| neves wrote:
| 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.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| 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.
| neves wrote:
| 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.
| jwr wrote:
| 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.
| imp0cat wrote:
| 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?
| qweiopqweiop123 wrote:
| 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.
| Izkata wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| The environment and the screen should have similar brightness. In
| the pictures in the article, the screen seems much too bright in
| comparison.
| rusty-ux wrote:
| You are spot on! - was a limitation of my 3d rendering
| abilities but great point.
| divan wrote:
| 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.
| hammock wrote:
| Have you heard of COVID? Is your home the ISS or something?
| khnov wrote:
| Now you need to tell him also what ISS is
| divan wrote:
| I know what ISS is. I just never had anyone in my circle
| reducing phrase "work from home" to a 3-letter acronym.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| What planet do you live on? Most of us here are from Earth.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| 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.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| 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.
| freefaler wrote:
| 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.
| Kiro wrote:
| Same here. Sounds like people are describing their yoga studios
| in this thread. Not for me.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| 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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| You're an exception.
|
| For most people, sitting in the dark with only their monitor
| giving off light _massively_ increases eye-strain.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| 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.
| devenson wrote:
| 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.
| dekhn wrote:
| 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.
| rusty-ux wrote:
| Do what works for you. If it's comfortable and you don't notice
| lingering issues it's probably fine.
| jjcm wrote:
| 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...
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| 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.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Do you wear sunscreen?
| iforgot22 wrote:
| 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.
| irunmyownemail wrote:
| 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.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| 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.
| hammock wrote:
| Talk to me about color therapy
| taylorbuley wrote:
| 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.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How do you accomplish silver colored lighting?
| kali_00 wrote:
| I would guess by reflecting light off something silvery,
| eg, a wall painted in metallic silver paint.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| 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.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| 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.
| tonymet wrote:
| 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?
| Havoc wrote:
| You're probably better off using a high quality converter to DC
| and DC lights
| tonymet wrote:
| in theory all the switching dc supplies will be operating on
| the same AC cycle thus the same led frequency
| Havoc wrote:
| No the output differs dramatically depending on quality of
| the supply. Simple example to illustrate:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r715nLvwWvE
| tonymet wrote:
| 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
| vault wrote:
| @jahfer what about dark mode/night mode? are you using it?
| darkwater wrote:
| 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.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| 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.
| rusty-ux wrote:
| 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.
| darkwater wrote:
| 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.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| 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.
| marcodena wrote:
| 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?
| rusty-ux wrote:
| 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...
| echoangle wrote:
| 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.
| pyaamb wrote:
| 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?
| rusty-ux wrote:
| 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.
| 01100011 wrote:
| 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.
| rusty-ux wrote:
| 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?
| 01100011 wrote:
| 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 .
| wzyoi wrote:
| 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.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| Great article.
|
| Personally, I would prefer real images than the renders.
| Nevermark wrote:
| 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.
| empressplay wrote:
| 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...
| winrid wrote:
| 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.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| 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.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| 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
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| > 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.
| notjoemama wrote:
| 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.
| sappler wrote:
| 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.
| sberens wrote:
| 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
| sebmellen wrote:
| 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
| sberens wrote:
| 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.
| NeckBeardPrince wrote:
| Please help me understand a $1500 lamp...
| sgt wrote:
| It's so expensive.. And it uses a whopping 500W. Why not then
| just use a regular halogen standing floor lamp?
| sberens wrote:
| You get 6x less lumens/watt with a halogen lamp
| neilv wrote:
| 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.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| 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
| thebrain wrote:
| 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.
| sebmellen wrote:
| 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.
| bevan wrote:
| 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/
|
| ...
| williamjinq wrote:
| 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).
| pretoriusdre wrote:
| 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.
| nunodonato wrote:
| 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
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| 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)
| Mali- wrote:
| 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.
| notsydonia wrote:
| 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.
| qwery wrote:
| > 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.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| 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
| Winblows11 wrote:
| 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
| animal531 wrote:
| 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.
| damnever wrote:
| 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.
| gunian wrote:
| here i am no home no money no job with 8 weeks to live looking at
| the lord's ladder
| chronogram wrote:
| 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.
| philjohn wrote:
| 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.
| randomtoast wrote:
| 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.
| xela79 wrote:
| 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
| qwery wrote:
| 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.
| Izkata wrote:
| > 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.
| scotty79 wrote:
| 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.
| saadel wrote:
| I'm surprised there is no mention of circadian rythms or the
| effects of artificial lights on us
| esafak wrote:
| 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...
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| 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
| thepratt wrote:
| 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)?
| rusty-ux wrote:
| 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.
| stusmall wrote:
| This was extremely useful. Thank you.
| waffletower wrote:
| Dark mode FTW. Would be nice if Hacker News had one.
| derac wrote:
| dark reader works well for it
| jedberg wrote:
| > 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.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| 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.
| keeptrying wrote:
| 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.
| dvcolgan wrote:
| 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 0deg and windy outside lately
| with no sun and I'm doing fine.
|
| I am in fact a plant.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| _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.
| iceenforcer wrote:
| 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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