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Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
- photochemsyn 4y agoSome of the best lighting around are the specialized fluorescent tubes used to promote coral growth in tropical aquariums. It's very close to full-spectrum sunlight and can be simply set up over a desk. Also great for small plants.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoHow are they in terms of energy consumption?
- photochemsyn 4y agoEach 2 ft tube is 25 W. It's basically a simple fluorescent tube, but the inner surface is coated with a special collection of phosphors that absorbs the incident radiation and re-radiates in a sun-like spectrum. They're a bit pricey relative to ordinary fluorescents, but the effect is really nice.
- mleonhard 4y agoBe careful of UV exposure from aquarium coral lamps.
- spangry 4y agoAny bulb / hardware recommendations? Also what do you think of mixing UV in there in some limited quantity?
- adjustno 4y agoThis sounds like an advertisement for Edison and Rolladens. No thank you.
- Nevermark 4y agoI have worked at home my whole career. It was life changing when I discovered I could aim several LED shop lights at my ceilings (90,000 lumens total, in a vaulted living room) to create a summer day indoors, even on the dimmest cloudiest winter day. When I remodeled my new home, I put 3 dimmable LED light strips around each ceiling, hidden above molding, so every ceiling is effectively a diffuse but high lumen light. Then I use smart bulbs in accent lamps and other lighting, to add color for variety and mood.
- halotrope 4y agoThat sounds great, Can you recommend any specific parts?
- was_a_dev 4y agoThis is my dream when I own my own home. I want high CRI LEDs with tunable colour temperature. Automated to track roughly the colour temperature of the outside environement. It would be great for those dark British winters
- fragmede 4y agoIf suffer from seasonal depression, I’d suggest that a couple lightbulbs (household size dependent) and some electrical work are well worth your time, even as a renter. Do it now, while you’re able to take on projects.
- kqr 4y agoI love the idea of indoor summer days, but my wife thinks it's cozy when it's dim inside (never mind that I think she'd enjoy winter more if she could get more daylight than what's available far north where we live). The dimmable strips sound like an amazing compromise. Are those available at sufficient wattage?
- chrisweekly 4y agoPlease, could you share more details re: specific hardware?
- 4y ago
- nootropicat 4y agoI recommend Chinese Milight led panels, there's a 2000 LM variant, very bright, cheap but high quality. They have full RGB + white temperature + dimming, I found the RGB part a pointless gimmick but dimming is invaluable.
- paganel 4y agoI'm lucky enough to live and to work from a well-lit apartment (mostly by natural light). I was made aware of that when I recently visited the newly purchased apartment of one of my close friends who has the building close to his building only, I don't know, I'd say 10-15 meters away, anyway, close enough that the natural light very rarely gets to his living room. I realised then that I would have been very unhappy to live there (even though, in all other respects, my friend's apartment is "better" compared to mine, as in it is situated in a better location and is bigger and more spacious). Light and noise (as in, its absence) make a hell of a difference in our well-being.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoThis guy changes so many lightbulbs to maintain is mood I almost wonder what’s the underlying issue.
- nattaylor 4y agoHue Ambiance, night shift and light/dark according to time of day on both phone and laptop really seem to help me feel awake and also get right to sleep
- hammyhavoc 4y agoCan you post a photo of how you're using the Ambiance bulbs? Looking for inspiration/lighting porn.
- Fargoan 4y agoI suddenly have a craving for yogurt
- derbOac 4y agoOne of the things I love about the shift to LED lights has been the focus on quantifying the different characteristics of light they emit, in terms of brightness, color, and spectrum, etc. It affords customizing light in ways that were swept under the rug a bit with bulbs in the past.
- nostromo 4y agoThe reason those didn’t matter so much in the past is because traditional light bulbs are so damn good. Even today, as good as LEDs have gotten, their color rendering is still noticeably worse than incandescents. (The highest scores are around 80-90 CRI, an old-fashioned bulb is the standard at 100.) Trouble dimming smoothly, harsh blues, flickering, strobing, excessive glare… all of these weren’t a problem until CFLs and LEDs, so now we need a bunch of measures to quantify our light.
- twelvechairs 4y agoCFLs produce a far less natural spectrum than LEDs. See https://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/Public/2016/October/led-lighting-2.jpg https://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/Public/2016/October/le...
- nostromo 4y agoUh yeah? We’re talking about how incandescents have superior light. CFLs are worse than both LEDs and incandescents.
- the_pwner224 4y ago> Even today, as good as LEDs have gotten, their color rendering is still noticeably worse than incandescents. (The highest scores are around 80-90 CRI, an old-fashioned bulb is the standard at 100.) This is false. Good quality LEDs are >90 CRI, and the higher end ones are 95+. These are not common because everyone is busy selling/buying the cheapest crap they can make/get, but they're definitely not hard to get either Ikea Ledare is a widely available >90 CRI bulb. The Ledare is also flicker free and has a metal heatsink base and good reputation for longevity/reliability (on the standard 800lm ones, the higher power ones seem to be more hit-or-miss depending on the exact model). However 99% of people aren't willing to spend $4-5 per bulb. High end COBs, like the Bridgelux Thrive, are pretty much perfect. Close enough to 100 that the difference doesn't matter. The Thrives have been out for a number of years now. They're not much more expensive than normal LED COBs. These sort of emitters just haven't made their way over to consumer products yet, because (sadly) nobody cares about light quality so there isn't much of a market.
- kuschku 4y agoI can’t understand people who prefer blackout curtains over rolladen. Rolladen are the best for getting perfect darkness at any time of day <3 Good to know that the author appreciates them as well
- a_t48 4y agoI personally never considered them as a solution. It's less preference and more not knowing they existed. I could put them in my current place (and it's tempting to!) but I'm moving again in six to nine months to a place I won't be able to.
- toma_caliente 4y agoBecause blackout curtrains are more accessible. I live in an apartment and probably couldn't install a rolladen even if I could afford it. You can get good blackout curtains for less than 20 dollars.
- Youden 4y agoMost of the Rollladen I've encountered leak a decent amount of light, so it makes sense to have blackout curtains in front of the Rollladen.
- MrAwesome 4y agoIt seems like there has been a lot of buzz lately about the importance of reducing light exposure at night and the impact it has on your health. I can certainly speak to it anecdotally - getting a nice pair of blackout curtains and putting electrical tape over the electronics LEDs in my bedroom seemed to do wonders for my sleep. A quick search for sources led me to this article, which has a nice collection of links to studies for those interested in learning more: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/bedroom-environment/light-and-sleep https://www.sleepfoundation.org/bedroom-environment/light-an...
- bozhark 4y agoThis makes me feel less crazy for the black electrical tape on all the LEDs.
- hnick 4y agoThere are little semi-translucent black stickers you can get called lightdims or something, I use those. Doesn't fully block the light but makes it very faint but still visible which I like. Sometimes you need a couple. Does not help for things like routers which have a glaring sun inside them that reflects off the white plastic and blasts out of every single ventilation hole.
- layer8 4y agohttps://www.lightdims.com/ https://www.lightdims.com/ I use them as well.
- 29083011397778 4y agoThe worst part is (IIRC) that blue LEDs are cheaper for the OEM, but worst in a dark room.
- beebmam 4y agoI've done the same thing and it has significantly made me feel comfier at night. There are other ways to improve your sleep quality as well! Don't use any electronic devices 30 minutes before bed or while in bed. Meditation before bed with deep slow breathing. A nice warm bath or shower. Sleeping on your side if you can. For me, none of these things helped when I was really struggling with sleep several years ago. It turns out I had severe sleep apnea! If you aren't sleeping well, talk to your doctor and see a sleep specialist. I swear by my CPAP. Both my waking and sleeping life is infinitely better with it treating my severe sleep apnea. Don't suffer in silence. If you're feeling unwell physically or mentally, talk to a medical professional. So much harm can be minimized and sometimes your ailment can be totally cured!
- lawkwok 4y agoPhillips Hue lights are something you think is a luxury until you get them. The ability to have light change colour temperature or dim depending on the time is so calming. Whenever I revert back to the non—colour-temperature-adjusted light, I feel like I’m in an operating room. The only thing I would note is that they are dimmer than regular lights. Having dim lights in the middle of the day really makes me sleepy.
- marvin 4y agoI’ve tried out LIFX, and they’re pretty decent. But I’m unhappy with the spectrum of their deep, low-intensity reds. They don’t go far enough into the long-wavelength. I use this at night, before sleep. Ditto with their pure whites; haven’t measured the spectrum but feels like they don’t manage to approximate sunlight in color rendering. Granted, the bulb I have only goes between blue-white and red. Anyone been thinking similar thoughts and know of any options?
- tedmiston 4y agoI tried LIFX briefly a long time ago, but try a Hue color bulb. They go very red. (I use all Hue Color bulbs.)
- gregwebs 4y agoI bought Phillips Wix bulbs during Black Friday for much less than Hue bulbs. The Wix orange/yellow is underpowered but it works fine for us since we are using that at night anyways.
- herbst 4y ago+1 for Wiz. Way cheaper, good bulbs with nice colours. It's still less power usage and cheaper to just put up a second one instead of a brighter one. Also automation does work very well and doesn't depend on proprietary gateways or so.
- sumedh 4y agoHue lights are not bright, if you want bright lights/color look at Lifx lights and can be controlled by Wifi.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pineconewarrior 4y agoAbsolutely, absolutely agree. Out of all of the things I own, the little monitor-top lightbar I have is at the top of my list for cost-to-life-benefit ratio. If I forget to turn it on I always why I feel so gloomy. Seriously get one, even if your lighting is otherwise nice.
- eblanshey 4y agoDo you have a link to the lightbar you have?
- pineconewarrior 4y agoI got the xiaomi version. I have an even cheaper one at my alternate workspace and it still works fantastic
- larrywright 4y agoNot OP, but I got this one and really like it. There are plenty of cheap ones, but this one is really nice. I will say that I don’t use the puck much except to turn it on and off. I don’t really change the color temperature or brightness. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DP7RYXV/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DP7RYXV/
- hammyhavoc 4y agoMy 34" ultrawide sits on the bridge of my desk above 4U height of 19" rackspace, is there much scope for angling the light about? Concerned that it might reflect on gear knobs. I otherwise really like what this does, quite a high price for some LEDs, but I have no doubt it's great...
- larrywright 4y agoIt's not super adjustable, it's really designed to illuminate the area just below the monitor (mine is actually a 43" 4K TV). It defaults to sitting at 90 degrees - straight down. It can be adjusted a little bit, but ONLY towards the monitor. This isn't terribly useful - I don't know why you'd want to do that. As for cost, yeah it's a bit much for what it is, but the build quality reflects that. The counterweight on the back is quite nice and solid feeling.
- smcleod 4y agoI'm surprised the author doesn't mention the importance of having high CRI lighting.
- clumsysmurf 4y agoAnd not only CRI, but the absence of flicker ... which is surprisingly common even in LED bulbs.
- pflanze 4y agoAgreeing on the flicker. I don't think it's surprising that it's so common, though--undimmed lights are cheapest to power by not making proper DC out of the AC coming from the socket, and dimmed lights are cheapest to dim by slow PWM (pulsing ~100 times per second) without including inductors to flatten the pulses.
- was_a_dev 4y agoIs there a way to tell if an LED bulb doesn't flicker
- layer8 4y agoSlow-motion video recording.
- pflanze 4y agoIt's also easy to see when you move your hands quickly back and forth in front of a dark background with fingers spread apart, instead of the fingers being blurred you'll see their image repeated distinctly many times (like a fan).
- was_a_dev 4y agoTechnically yes, but unfortunately that means purchasing the bulb beforehand
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sdrothrock 4y agoJapanese ceiling lights have standard functionalities for adjusting not only brightness, but also yellow-blue levels. Are simpler (e.g. not full RGB) LED lights like this not as common/affordable in other places? I just realized that I really take them for granted.
- Gigachad 4y agoI have seen downlights which have a switch to toggle between warm and cool but the switch is not accessible after installation. I imagine the hardest part is just the controls. You’d have to run some data line along with the electrical and then have a special switch which contains the controls. Unless you are willing to go with a wireless remote in which case just get the ikea bulbs for cheap.
- doctorhandshake 4y agoThe simpler version of this is Philips Warm Glow in the US, generically known as 'warm dim', where the lamp has two LED engines - one bright and cold, one dimmer and warm, and it crossfades between them when the lamp is dimmed. Works great. I use it for every lamp in my house.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y agoPhilips Scene Switch (formerly Choose Scene) cycle between warm and cool each power cycle. I found the cool white too full resulting in a dull clinical grey look and ended up replacing them all with dimmable 150mm warm LED downlights.
- ninjin 4y agoAgreed on all points, Japanese ceiling lights are wonderful. For context, the great majority of Japanese homes and apartments come with standardised, non-screw, ceiling light fixtures for which you purchase your own lights when you move in. In fact, I had never even seen a building without these fixtures until I moved into my current apartment (built by Sekisui House in 2019) that for some reason has these horrible in-ceiling, spotlight-esque lights that are common at least in Europe. Whilet they have a somewhat yellow tint, they can not be dimmed. My solution was to grab a standard desk lamp and LED bulbs that came with a simple IR remote, so as not to torture my poor eyes at night.
- friedman23 4y agoLights are extremely powerful but people always seem to focus on only half the equation. Waking up to light is a million times better than waking up to sound. My lights dim and turn off around 9:30pm and turn on at 5:30 am and brighten until 6:00 am. I wake up without any grogginess at all. It's amazing.
- vermarish 4y agoSome of the best sleep I've ever had was while camping, where tent is pitch black at night and a soft diffuse glow in the morning.
- adamredwoods 4y agoI go camping and everything is noisy or hot as soon as the sun comes up. Worst sleep I could ever get.
- neilv 4y agoThis is the use case that'll probably get me to invest in IoT products (which I otherwise don't want in my home). (I have one of those Philips alarm clocks with the "sunrise" light, but it doesn't light the room enough to wake me.)
- viceroyalbean 4y agoSleep as android's automation feature coupled with home assistant allows me to do things like turn on the lights when my alarm turns on (or offset by some time).
- mrwnmonm 4y agoI just want to say this, the anime in that tweet is a terrible life, and human beings never learn anything.
- benreesman 4y agoAt the risk of sparking some kind of Apple flame war: I went to the optometrist recently and my vision had abruptly tanked, I have a much stronger prescription than a year ago. “Have you been pulling long screen hours?” “Yeah. Very long.” “Well that’s why.” “Outside of cutting screen hours, is there anything else I can do?” “Get the highest DPI display you can afford and crank up the font size. Won’t help much, but it’ll help a little.” So I splurged on the 6k display. I can literally feel it in my temples after a long session.
- was_a_dev 4y agoI've recently been looking at collimated displays, they're used by flight sim users to improve immersion in game. They use a large fresnel lens in front of their monitor in order to collimate the light. For their purpose it adds a perception of depth to the viewed image. However, they also claim there is a natural relaxing of the eyes, which adds to the immersion. I wonder if such a display would work in an office environement. A quick look for any literature came up blank.
- goldenkey 4y agoAs an optometrist with a deep knowledge on this subject, let me first say, the established edifice of eye care and laser eye surgery is an abomination that ruins lives. The advice your optometrist gave you is the information they were indoctrinated with and sadly, it's erroneous. What follows is my best synopsis on what is wrong with the industry, what causes worsening vision, and what you can do to resolve your vision issues in a matter of months and never have to worry about it again. You'll still need some form of corrective lenses though - I'm not selling bullshit. ----------------- Most cases of myopia (nearsightness), involving progressively worsening vision, are largely due to inaccurate lens prescriptions. An optometrist or optician will have you sit with your head in the phoropter asking "better/worse" while flipping lenses - pretty much a binary search type of approach. But this is often done hastily and results in inaccurate prescriptions. ----------- Unfortunately, inaccurate scripts are often inflicted upon children which as I will describe later, compounds into worsening vision over time, with the opticians/optometrists prescribing higher and higher power lenses that are only solving an issue that is created by the previous history of inaccuracy! Telltale signs of inaccurate scripts include: - minor corrections Eyes are not static objects and vision actually does vary from month to month, day to day, lighting conditions, blood pressure, etc. If a correction is minor, it's almost always unecessary and harmful. - slightly different prescriptions for left (OS) and right (OR) eyes. 99.9% of folks have equivalent vision in both eyes. Like I said above, if a difference is minor, a correction would almost always be harmful. - minor cylinder corrections (astigmatism.) Astigmatism is extremely rare and when it does occur it's almost never minor. These corrections are especially egregious as they cause distortion compensation. ----------- So why do eye professionals commit these cardinal acts of eye destruction upon their patients? Well we already discussed hastyness but that is clearly a vice that is going to result in bad outcomes in any profession. What else? Well, eye professionals are taught to seek out as perfectly sharp an image as possible, and then back off the power a bit to reduce the possibility of eyestrain, headache, and dizziness. Some professionals don't even back off the power though.. In order to accomplish this task of perfect sharp vision, they add all of these minor corrections. When these ill-fitting lenses are worn for months on end, the body has a somatic response. The eyeballs elongate, which pushes the focal plane back, causing further myopia. [1] The patient goes back to the eye doctor and now receives an even more incorrect script based on the transient state their eyes are in, induced by a cascading patterned history of harmful scripts. In the worst case, the eye doctor recommends laser eye surgery which shaves the corneal lens of your eye into an artificial lens. Essentially, they carve your current harmful prescription straight into your eyeball. And then guess what happens? The eyeball shortens and often, the patients vision becomes progressively worse again. It can take months, but it does happen. [2] And now the fix that they recommend? More laser eye surgery. It's barbaric. So please, do not get eye surgery before trying what I recommend below. Surgery on the cornea is advertised as non invasive but it can cause life long issues such as chronic dry eye. Please try to assess whether your vision is actually bad, or just a transient state due to a long history of bad prescriptions and poor habits. ---------- How do you break the cycle and restore your vision? 1) First, look at your current script. How asymmetric is it? How small are the cylinder values, if any? Lower the scripts power and make the prescription symmetric. Remove the minor cylinder values. So for example, if you had -3.6 and -3.4 with some small astigmatism corrections, just ask for a script for -3.4 SPH in both eyes. 2) Make sure the pupillary distance is correct - eye professionals are notorious for fucking this up because the PD needs be to custom set for the frame the lenses will be going in, otherwise you'll have lenses with a focal center that is not aligned with the center of your eyeball. This causes distortion and uneven focus, causing eye strain and worsening vision. 3) Aspheric lenses - buy good lenses like Seiko double aspherics - just like cinema or photo lenses cost a lot of money because they reduce abberation and edge distortion, your eyes benefit from the same technology. Bottom dollar spherical lenses are okay, but strain is not healthy for eyes, and a good $300 set of Seiko transition lenses with coatings can last 10+ years. It's worth your eye health. 4) Have multiple pairs of spectacles. Use the weakest usable one (or no specs) depending on the task you are doing. For instance, I'm on my phone in bed, so I am not using any glasses. This will improve your vision over time. You can slowly reduce the power of your scripts if you care about it. I went from -4.75 to -3.5 and I'm happy with what I'm at, so I don't spend any effort trying to lower any further. But if you have the money, the time, and the will, you can get to -1.X territory through judicious use of a set of activity appropriate lenses. Lastly, buy your own frame, buy your own pupilary distance tools, buy your own trial lens kit and trial frame like the Oculus UB6. Take time and figure out the right prescription for yourself without it being rushed. Test it and have it remade if the center of focus of the lenses is not at the center of your eyes. PD is integral! ------------- An eye professional who cares and understands these things CAN help and even properly measure these values but they are rare. Sometimes if you want something done right, you kind of have to do it yourself. Or at the very least, guide or give your demands. After all, you are the paying customer. Hope this helps others break the cycle of worsening vision. If anyone has any question, feel free to reach out. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470669/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470669/ [2] https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/news/20030410/some-patients-need-second-lasik-surgery https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/news/20030410/some-patients...
- llamataboot 4y agoI agree with this 100%. When we bought our house 5 years ago I bought some hue bulbs as a luxury purchase along with one Sonos speaker. Figured I was spending 200 grand on a house so may as well pay a few hundred dollars worth of toys. Fast forward 5 years and the whole house is automated (and not through the cloud) but the ability to change moods with lights (and lights with moods) and especially have non-white light throughout the house has been amazing. I can't even remember the last time light was truly bright white except for occasionally in the morning when needing to wake up or when needing to really read and concentrate. Other than that it seems vaguely inhuman to go into a house and be lit up in cold white lights like an interrogation
- hammock 4y agoWhat colors and moods do you use?
- llamataboot 4y agoReally depends on the room and the time! I would say that once you get over some initial shock about colored lights, sometimes it makes sense to have lights in room half brightness orange-yellows and sometimes it even is nice to have them deep blues and purples and some accent lights are always nice to have somewhat colorful because they are mostly providing ambience and decoration rather than light to do something with Also moving away from overhead lighting and towards more lamps and wall lighting in rooms has also done wonders. Something about overhead bright lights feels unnatural once you don't have them Which makes sense being that the only time that sort of light happens outside is at midday in the summer
- ilaksh 4y agoI think what would really make a difference is carefully controlled UV or full spectrum because glass blocks the UV necessary for making D3.
- nopenopenopeno 4y agoThe attraction is not the lighting. It's the people living in harmony with nature and eachother, and the implicit lack of human exploitation.
- singhrac 4y agoI didn't love the author's suggestion of Edison bulbs, but maybe I am missing something amazing about them that makes up for the fact that they use ~10x the energy of low color temperature (e.g. 2500K) LEDs? I guess it seems online that "Edison bulb" can refer to form factor rather than incandescent?
- dbttdft 4y ago"Edison bulb" refers to a style and not anything to do with the quality of light. And you will probably get LED and a buggy one at that. Get incandescents, never ever use CFL because they look terrible and will make you want to kill yourself. Only get LED if you need cold color temperature, and know what you're doing enough to avoid flicker and other LED problems like bad color rendering. Half of LEDs will flicker even in normal non-dimming fixtures fast enough that you dont see it looking dead on, but slow enough that when you move your hand you will see multiple copies of your hand. Some LEDs look terrible like fluorescent lights. >Dark mode Is crap in practice. 1/10 of your programs needed for a task will not have dark mode. Also most dark modes are high contrast instead of just low brightness. Most programs will suddenly show something bright because they are not cohesively developed (some stupid library will show an unthemed window), and most LCDs cannot be dimmed enough to be used in the dark without straining your eyes (also it will need to be PWM-free which is common now but it is still another constraint). Another fun fact is that if you use a program like redshift to set the color temperature low, the overshoot on a typical LCD will make flashes of white light every time you scroll. The pragmatic solution is to go to bed early, or just do what I do which is to use CRT/OLED and forget about dark modes but set the brightness and color temperature low.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Jaruzel 4y ago> Get incandescents In the UK, and in the EU, standard bulb incandescents are no longer being imported and the current stock is all there is, and as you say CFLs are horrible. So the options left are halogen (just as bad as CFL imho) or LED. I've resisted LED for ages, but now it seems they are finally good enough to replace incandescents.
- dbttdft 4y ago> So the options left are halogen I don't think they are as bad as CFL. CFL have really cold dim light with some other phenomena going on. I have seen LEDs that are, though. > but now it seems they are finally good enough to replace incandescents. Certainly not on average. Half the time I encounter an LED I notice that it flickers, even without a dimmer. I just bought 4 for $50 thinking I paid enough to get a non-bullshit product, and they flicker and I will have to go try the $60 one next.
- tgv 4y agoThat's an article? A rehash of a handful of common ideas with no relation to the title and no further exposition, let alone some support for the ideas? How does something so empty get upvoted so quickly? Did brightness and dark mode become some kind of belief system?
- aaron695 4y ago
- bob_theslob646 4y agoYeah, agreed. Is their any science behind this?
- istorical 4y agoPeople upvote headlines these days (as a form of agreement) rather than articles. But you're right. This is on the extreme low end in terms of details.
- jioewnrklnfka 4y agoFocusing on my light exposure has helped my delayed sleep phase disorder immensely. I used to sleep from noon to 6pm. I now sleep consistently between 4 am and 11 am, a huge improvement. I make sure I get plenty of natural light immediately when I wake up and continuously throughout the day. I set my bulbs to 5000K on full-brightness during the day, then dim and change them to 2200K in the evening. After 10pm I do not use ceiling lights, only lamps with hue bulbs. After midnight I change the lamp bulbs to red and set them to 10% (I use HomeAssistant to make automate all this). An hour before I go to bed, I use no lights other than a small flashlight with a red LED on the nightlight setting. I avoid all electronics after midnight other than my kindle on it's lowest light setting. After making all these changes and sticking to them for 5 months I no longer need to take any sleeping aids which didn't work well anyway. The hardest part was changing when I workout, eat, work, etc. as I was so used to doing all those things overnight for the past 10+ years. This conversation was very insightful to me: https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=oUu3f0ETMJQ https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=oUu3f0ETMJQ I understand some may not like the interviewer, but here is the wiki on Dr. Samer Hattar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samer_Hattar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samer_Hattar
- DeWilde 4y agoDark mode is actually bad for your eyes as it causes more strain. Reading white letters on a black back ground is harder than reading black letters on a white background. F.lux and similar software are a better alternative as they just increase the warmth of the screen, which, at least for me, eliminates that feeling of eye pain when computing at night.
- alimov 4y agoDoes this apply to letters of different colors? (Non-white letters on darker backgrounds?)
- layer8 4y agoYes, although there is a trade-off with respect to the fact that the more vibrant you want your colors to be, the more brightness they generally require (starting from dark colors), which may result in less contrast on a white vs. a black background. On a white background you therefore want to stay with muted/dark text colors. Another consideration is that screen brightness should roughly correspond to the ambient brightness of the environment. Unless you work in the dark, that basically requires a light background. Vibrant text colors on a dark background look attractive (like neon signs), but aren’t very ergonomic in the long run.
- DeWilde 4y agoAccording to this [0] it seems to be defined as dark characters and bright backgrounds. So probably not just strictly black and white colors. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23654206/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23654206/
- nicbou 4y agoAlso don’t just drench the space in light. Small accent lights (like a desk lamp) make a space so much cosier. I have small lamps in every corner and they’re great. They all have warm light. In the bedroom I have a dimmable lamp that can be scarcely brighter than candle. It’s great for reading, and for not blinding myself when I need to find something on the bedside table. Like others, I recommend a big monitor. I use MonitorControl on Mac to adjust it automatically and manually. Night Shift and other orange light filters are a godsend.
- alin23 4y agoI always felt overhead lights are tiring, and I almost never turned them on since I left for college and had my own place. In the last 7 years I experimented with everything: ambiental LED strips/string, IKEA Tradfri bulbs, 150W LED COBs, desk lamps, hidden source of light, TV/monitor ambilight. In the end I settled for very little lighting, created with ESPHome [1], and controlled through my Volum app [2], part of which can be seen in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzz-xrEon7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzz-xrEon7g 1. An RGBW monitor ambient light (bright enough to light up the entire room when I need it) 2. A battery powered string light which I take everywhere with me so I don't have to use overhead lights in Airbnb's/hotels etc. 3. Long, warm and dim string lights for hallway, bedroom and balcony [1] https://esphome.io/#light-components https://esphome.io/#light-components [2] https://lowtechguys.com/volum https://lowtechguys.com/volum