Blue light reduction for your eye safety

H

Hunter Bop

n00b
Joined
Aug 18, 2018
Messages
11
Hello all. I'm looking to put a shield over my 27 inch monitor to protect my eyes from blue light which is said can hurt your eyes in the long run. Anyone have any suggestions?

I also work with two 19in LCD screen and one laptop screen buzzing in my eyes all day. I stare at a screen all day.

Would I eliminate any blue light issues if i turned all of my monitors to black and white?
 
Assuming that blue light damages your eyes (it doesn't), any kind of white light from a monitor has to have blue light in it. So turning to black and white only wouldn't help at all and may just make the problem worse depending on the content you're viewing.

Now, if you just want to reduce the strain that blue light causes, you can turn down the blue level if your monitor supports it. Everything will look funny though. That said, I've found that turning down the monitor's brightness and increasing ambient light helps a LOT more.
 
Okay so it causes "discomfort" (also known as pain) but not injury? lol, sure. I didn't see much in that article that said they disproved that blue light causes injury, either. I see no studies performed. ...or even actual facts stated? Just a few mentions that there's no proof blue light causes injury.

I can pop open a white screen, slide my Flux from very aggressive to completely off and instantly feel my eyes tense up and start to hurt.

Things I do to relieve eye strain
1 dim your monitor, a lot. Go gradually until it starts to bother you, then do it again in a few days until it's best for you. You can also set up quick toggles so if, for example, you're playing a particularly dark game you can just switch it to "regular" and then when you're done go back to "workmode." My XB271HU is set to brightness 0, contrast 0.

2 I use f.lux I've heard there's ways to do this from the factory but IMO flux just makes it easy, though I've never seen a good guide. https://justgetflux.com/ Careful on installation, they ask for some info that isn't needed, just opt out of all that crap.

3 https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/854-enable-dark-mode-pc-apps.html This article is actually fairly comprehensive

There are dark themes for a lot of stuff these days. You can run universal dark theme scripts in Stylus for pages that don't have dark themes.

Ryan is spot on that keeping some light in the room on, especially a warmer color light is ideal. You don't have to go crazy buying special bulbs but those ultra white bathroom lights aren't ideal.

Hope all this helps!
 
You can get blue light filtering glasses (coatings on Rx glasses or Gunnar gaming glasses) and screen shields that seem to be better than trying to play with the color balance of the monitor. The filters can block the lower end of the blue spectrum + UV, and block backlight bleeding as well. I don't think UV is an issue with LED backlights, only the old fluorescent ones. Doing it via software is valuable still though.

I've had my Rx glasses with the blue filter coating for a couple years now, seems to help eyestrain for me.
 
Lol better never go out in the sun.
The blue light stuff is hilarious.

The key to eye strain is a decent monitor, good distance and height, with not too much brightness and good background lighting.
 
How to fix eye strain:

Take frequent breaks.
Drink more water.
Adjust the Ambient light in the room.

You can opt for filters or glasses, but doing the previous three will most likely have the biggest impact on eye strain. I had an issue years ago and ended up getting reading glasses and filters to try and help. But my eye doctor told me to do the previous three steps and those ended up fixing my issue and have never needed reading glasses or filters since. Most doctors will tell you to follow those same steps rather than go down the road of special glasses or filters.
 
Just no, the blue light scare is overrated. If I recall AOC included some cutting of certain blue light wavelengths in their low blue light tech, but other than that every company selling monitors just cut some blue digitally in their "low blue light" modes, similar to what F.lux or Windows Night Light provides.

Low blue light modes makes a lot of sense, for a more natural production of melotonin and a screen color temperature better matching the temperature of lamps when the sun is down.

I would be much more worried about PWM dimming. Not that you would be hurting your eyes in the long run due to PWM, but it will cause eye fatigue and headaches in some people. Good reason why Benq, and then everyone else, more or less abolished it in 2014.
 
Last edited:
Try f.lux. It's a program that gently changes your display colors when day transitions to night. It's very configurable, and can be shut off with like two clicks if you need normal brightness/blue. I like it.

https://justgetflux.com/

It's what MS tried to mimic recently.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
The sun is usually a slightly warmer color than standard LCD settings. I also do not recommend staring at the sun.
Click to expand...
Colour temperature of the sun varies throughout the day actually. At midday it can be far more blue in some parts of the world than any LCD screen, e.g. in New Zealand the ozone layer even lets through lots of nasty UV-B...

But as mentioned, at night lower blue levels helps for getting to sleep as blue is what your circadian rhythm mostly attunes to.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
I also do not recommend staring at the sun.
Click to expand...
Any particular reason for that negative 'recommendation'?

I do sun gazing from time to time for almost half of my life and my sight improved quite a lot during this time.
In my teens I had good sight but in order to see clearly I had to focus eyes on point I wanted to see and eyes got tired eyes quite often, even to the point I had to either close them or look out of focus for some time because trying to see clearly caused pain. My color vision was adequate to see and recognize colors but the way I experiences was colors was completely unimpressive.
Today I see everything sharp all the time and without any eye strain or even effort to focus eyes on things I see. Presentation of images improved so much that colors are not only more vibrant but actually pure pleasure to see, a kind of synesthesia.
Seeing in darkness also improved... though for some time after sun gazing this aspect is somehow compromised.
Last year I did sun gazing longer than ever and to the point I actually fell irritation and even slight pain sensation in eyes. Sound dangerous... right? Not only immediately world just looked so much better, just like everything was 'happy', but in the end my sight improved even more.

It is like sun light directly stimulated cells in my eyes and I have more of them in the radius incidentally the size of sun... it is visible on certain images (Eg. static noise of old CRT TV's) where I have perfect circle with much sharper vision... this circle have sharp edges.
Vastly increased color response also suggests this to be the case. Visual cortex seems to like being blasted with all the received stimulation as well.

Only negative aspect of this was that it seemed as if my visual cortex was not up to the task to process all the increased impulses from eyes and could not always process vision properly and it took up to few years for it to really adapt. Some visual artifacts were very beautiful and pleasant but other times I had strange effects like overdrawn edges with subtle details struggling to appear like processing power to process feed from eyes was not there. Since my brain adapted I have enough spare processing power in my visual cortex and knowledge how it works to be able to do post processing of whatever variety I want eg. on YT videos I can do compression artifact removal, de banding, neuron network based up-scaling : ) , etc. Since I had these issues with sight I had a lot of time and opportunity to work with my visual cortex to understand how it works and learn to control it.

Since burning my eyes with our beloved sunny sun worked for me I find sun gazing phobia as just that: phobia. Of course I expect everyone to ignore this. I can safely post this knowing that no competition for the title of 'best eye-sight owner in the world' will arise from it :)

ps. I never wear sun glasses and find the idea of them to be ridiculous :ROFLMAO:
 
XoR_ said:
Any particular reason for that negative 'recommendation'?

I do sun gazing from time to time for almost half of my life and my sight improved quite a lot during this time.
In my teens I had good sight but in order to see clearly I had to focus eyes on point I wanted to see and eyes got tired eyes quite often, even to the point I had to either close them or look out of focus for some time because trying to see clearly caused pain. My color vision was adequate to see and recognize colors but the way I experiences was colors was completely unimpressive.
Today I see everything sharp all the time and without any eye strain or even effort to focus eyes on things I see. Presentation of images improved so much that colors are not only more vibrant but actually pure pleasure to see, a kind of synesthesia.
Seeing in darkness also improved... though for some time after sun gazing this aspect is somehow compromised.
Last year I did sun gazing longer than ever and to the point I actually fell irritation and even slight pain sensation in eyes. Sound dangerous... right? Not only immediately world just looked so much better, just like everything was 'happy', but in the end my sight improved even more.

It is like sun light directly stimulated cells in my eyes and I have more of them in the radius incidentally the size of sun... it is visible on certain images (Eg. static noise of old CRT TV's) where I have perfect circle with much sharper vision... this circle have sharp edges.
Vastly increased color response also suggests this to be the case. Visual cortex seems to like being blasted with all the received stimulation as well.

Only negative aspect of this was that it seemed as if my visual cortex was not up to the task to process all the increased impulses from eyes and could not always process vision properly and it took up to few years for it to really adapt. Some visual artifacts were very beautiful and pleasant but other times I had strange effects like overdrawn edges with subtle details struggling to appear like processing power to process feed from eyes was not there. Since my brain adapted I have enough spare processing power in my visual cortex and knowledge how it works to be able to do post processing of whatever variety I want eg. on YT videos I can do compression artifact removal, de banding, neuron network based up-scaling : ) , etc. Since I had these issues with sight I had a lot of time and opportunity to work with my visual cortex to understand how it works and learn to control it.

Since burning my eyes with our beloved sunny sun worked for me I find sun gazing phobia as just that: phobia. Of course I expect everyone to ignore this. I can safely post this knowing that no competition for the title of 'best eye-sight owner in the world' will arise from it :)

ps. I never wear sun glasses and find the idea of them to be ridiculous :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...

I feel like i'm being punk'd reading this.
 
Greyson said:
I feel like i'm being punk'd reading this.
Click to expand...
I do realize that it sounds unlikely and people might feel like one of these 'iOS update make your phone waterproof' joke... :ROFLMAO::dead:

There is this nice book https://www.amazon.com/Method-Better-Eyesight-Without-Glasses/dp/0805002413 which EVERYONE should read. It have good ideas about sight and even only knowing them should be enough to be wary of certain issues, how to use eyes, how to not damage them, etc. and in result in long term preserve eyesight if not improve it even without doing any exercises.

Using Sun to improve eyesight is a little bit extreme and outside scope of this book.

Compared to lots of people my age and I had pretty good eyesight, I could see sharp even when I tried glasses people, sharper with their glasses than they and even sharper without any glasses.
And I did it, stared at the fckng Sun, stared right in its happy smiley face, burning with the force of nuclear fusion, burning like there was no tomorrow. Did it because I had a hunch that it might possibly not kill off but actually stimulate growth of cells in my eyes and by a general rule the more seeing cells in my eyes the better :)

Do you know why I did it despite having good eyesight?
Because unlike all you basic bitches I am the [H]ardcore playa and this is just how I roll :cigar:
I would put ":cool:" but I do not use sun glasses, I ain't afraid of no Sun :cat:
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
The sun provides us with vitamin D as it enters our eyes. Looking directly at the sun it not going to make you go blind. I don't suggest it for long as it feels not so good after a moment. Wearing sunglasses outside is not a good idea because you block the absorption of vitamin D. Cloudy days suck and we get the blues because the sun does us good.

There is something not so good about blue lights at night from monitors and TV sets. I lowered my blue color all the way down on my LCD monitor. I just heard it enters the eyes and kills cells that are for seeing and they never regenerate. I haven't read much more into it though.

My thread is not to debate whether you believe me or not for I don't give two turds to the wind. I just asked does anyone else try to limit their exposure and how can i do it?
 
The sun does not provide us with vitamin D, nor does vitamin D come from our eyes (though a Vitamin D deficiency will effect our eyes). Our skin is what provides us with Vitamin D when exposed to UV-B. Wearing sunglasses has zero effect on this.

Looking directly at the Sun for extended periods of time WILL blind you. Look up solar retinopathy. Granted most of the damage is repaired within 6-18 months you'll be able to see again, but some damage will always remain. Also, UV exposure to the cornea and lens will cause then to opacify. I've had cataracts... they suck. Sunglasses are a good thing here.

Blue light has not been shown to cause any damage to the eyes. What blue light IS known to do is disrupt our natural day-night rhythms. We evolved to in an environment where blue light was present only during the day, and the production or inhibition of certain hormones is triggered by it. So having it around at night is something our bodies don't know how to handle.

Lastly, this is a discussion forum. When you post a question, you can expect to not only get answers, but also some discussion about those answers. Whether or not you want a debate on the subject of your question is irrelevant, and posting rude commentary about it will only serve to get your shown the door. If you just want answers, Google is your friend.
 
ryan_975 said:
The sun does not provide us with vitamin D, nor does vitamin D come from our eyes (though a Vitamin D deficiency will effect our eyes). Our skin is what provides us with Vitamin D when exposed to UV-B. Wearing sunglasses has zero effect on this.

Looking directly at the Sun for extended periods of time WILL blind you. Look up solar retinopathy. Granted most of the damage is repaired within 6-18 months you'll be able to see again, but some damage will always remain. Also, UV exposure to the cornea and lens will cause then to opacify. I've had cataracts... they suck. Sunglasses are a good thing here.

Blue light has not been shown to cause any damage to the eyes. What blue light IS known to do is disrupt our natural day-night rhythms. We evolved to in an environment where blue light was present only during the day, and the production or inhibition of certain hormones is triggered by it. So having it around at night is something our bodies don't know how to handle.

Lastly, this is a discussion forum. When you post a question, you can expect to not only get answers, but also some discussion about those answers. Whether or not you want a debate on the subject of your question is irrelevant, and posting rude commentary about it will only serve to get your shown the door. If you just want answers, Google is your friend.
Click to expand...
The sun too does provide us with vitamin D. Not here to debate this.
 
... sunlight isn't made up of vitamin D, you get ultraviolet rays which your skin uses along with cholesterol to create vitamin D.
 
Most monitors/TVs are set to high color temperature (~9000K) which is too blue. It is tiring to the eyes over long duration. Lower your display temperature to something close to 6000K.
 
Windows 10 has Night light which makes color warmer its easier on the eyes but I found I couldn't tolerate it when I had to go back to work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top