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I was a big believer in dark mode for a long time, until I started trying to reduce my SAD symptoms during the winter time. I read this blog post here [0] after

by wincy 4y ago

I was a big believer in dark mode for a long time, until I started trying to reduce my SAD symptoms during the winter time. I read this blog post here [0] after seeing it on HN, and ended up buying 28 100W equivalent bulbs and a 500W equivalent corn bulb. I get a pretty decent amount of light in my home office now, and light mode is essential on my workstation or it's almost impossible to even SEE anything on screen, since the external light will wash out the backlights of the LED. I bought some higher brightness monitors but am starting to realize all those years of using dark mode was just lending itself to me spending 8 hours a day working in a dark room and was making me depressed, especially in the winter. It's been interesting because my wife is complaining about feeling glum but I've been in a much better mood than I've been in the last few winters. We're talking about spending a few thousand dollars to get ultra bright lighting throughout the house instead of just in my office. [0] https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/ https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/

kitsunesoba 4y ago
The monitor brightness struggle was something I encountered first a 3 or so years ago when I moved into place with big windows that got a lot of natural light during the latter half of the day, even in the winter. Garden variety 250-350 nit displays really struggle with that kind of light, even if it's indirect and the screen in question is matte. 400-450 nits I've found is about the minimum for universally usable display brightness indoors, assuming either a matte finish or good anti-glare coating (e.g. like that on newer MacBooks). If it's the sadly far more common mirror-type glossy displays found on damn near every laptop and non-enthusiast/pro desktop monitor out there, you're going to need 500-600 nits to cut through the glare.
- wincy 4y ago
  This has absolutely been my struggle since upgrading my lighting. It’s also so difficult to find data about how bright a monitor actually is! I bought some 1440p “gaming monitors” that I think are around 450 nits, and these are just barely bright enough for my newly lit up office.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    This one has pretty decent brightness and comes with great blacks too. And the widescreen format is great for development. The 34" is basically an extended 27", whereas the 38" is an extended 32" https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/alienware-34-curved-qd-oled-gaming-monitor-aw3423dw/apd/210-bdsz/monitors-monitor-accessories https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/alienware-34-curved-qd-oled-...
    - rxyz 4y ago
      Alienware QD-OLEDs have a special pixel layout which isn't good for text
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        It’s probably not as much of a problem on macOS and Linux where the majority of apps will obey system text rendering settings (and macOS defaults to non-subpixel AA anyway) but under Windows everybody does their own thing for text rendering regardless of how you’ve set up ClearType and it’s a mess.
- nextaccountic 4y ago
  Is it possible to have a 500 or 600 nits display, but still have the lowest brightness settings be equal or lower than the lowest settings of a 250 nits display? That's my biggest issue
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Going below 50% brightness on _most_ monitors brings the flickering into the realm that many humans can perceive. This is because the physical brightness cannot actually be controlled, so PWM is used to adjust perceived brightness.
    - onli 4y ago
      That is not true for many displays. Have a look at reviews, whether there is pwm control/flickering is part of all(?) professional reviews now.
      - dotancohen 4y ago
        Terrific, that is great to know. I might update my monitors if so.
        imhoguy 4y ago
        First thing when I buy any monitor is "flicker-free" keyword. If you got one with PWM then the best you can do is to max out the monitor LED brightness and reduce screen brightness/gamma with an app.
        onli 4y ago
        :) Maybe an aside, but for notebooks, I know that notebookcheck always has a section about this in their reviews. https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Dragonfly-Folio-13-5-G3-convertible-review-No-more-Snapdragon-or-Windows-on-ARM.673537.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Dragonfly-Folio-13-5-G3-con... for example - and even if PWM is detected, they check how high the frequency is (high enough and it should bother no one). For monitors, RTINGs.com checks for PWM, https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/dell/alienware-aw3423dw https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/dell/alienware-aw3423... as an example (like imhoguy mentioned, flicker free is the keyword to search for).
ezconnect 4y ago
I actually dont understand why other people can work in a dimly lit space and having dark mode on their monitor. It make feel so lazy and gloomy.
- sneak 4y ago
  Not everyone's bodies work the same. Working too long in a brightly lit room makes me extremely tired. The only way I can work long hours is in simulated twilight.
  - wincy 4y ago
    For me it’s an issue of seasonal depression. I get really agitated over the weeks and months of it being drab during the winter months, until I feel severe cabin fever in January or so and my mental state gets really, really bad, like “I’m going to book a flight to Miami and leave right now everything else be damned” sort of crazy. It’s not really a fun time. I don’t mind working in a dark room, but if I do it for weeks at a time I’ll start to have problems if I’m not getting bright lights at other times (which during winter there aren’t many opportunities for). It also has the hilarious added effect of totally blowing out my laptops webcam and making me look like I have an angelic halo of light atop my head.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  I come alive at night in a dark room. It makes me feel like the only things left in the world are just me and whatever I'm doing, giving me complete focus.
  - djtango 4y ago
    Different strokes, but totally on the same page. A behaviour I've observed in myself is I gravitate towards big windows and like to work in an environment where I feel I have lots of space, but I am very happy working in complete darkness (but also value sunlight)
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  In my case, it's either or: either dark room and dimmed screen or (more recently) dark mode on everything, or bright room and light mode. By bright I really mean bright - maybe not SAD-mitigation level like the OP, but I do turn on extra lights during the day, particularly when its cloudy. What I can't tolerate is "half-light" - dimly lit space, afternoon/evening levels of daylight. Or the standard level of light most people have. Or warm light. That's one is actually a point of contention with my wife - she prefers warm light, I prefer cold. We compromised on "neutral", which has a benefit of not screwing with colors like warm does. It's tolerable for me, though I still occasionally notice how it yellow-tints everything. By can't tolerate, I mean that in underlit rooms, I struggle to stay awake. Really struggle - I start to yawn uncontrollably, my mind gets hazy, and I need to pump myself with some stimulants (i.e. caffeine, usually) just to be able to function. Add more lights, or make the room dark, and I'm OK again.
_8j50 4y ago
That's so many 100w bulbs, do you wear sunglasses indoors or soemthing? Very interesting.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s nothing compared to the brightness of outside (even on a cloudy day) unless you stare directly into the soul of the corncob.
- wincy 4y ago
  They’re actually 13W or so? I use a 7-way splitter on 4 bulb slots made for higher watt incandescent bulbs. That helps a lot, then use a corn bulb I bought that uses 100W and puts out 10,000 lumens. It still only gets the room to 7,000 lux, which is less than a bright day. My Lux meter clocked 50,000 lux streaming through the window in October!
andruby 4y ago
I added a diy 50W LED that shines on the white ceiling of my office room. The diffuse bounced light feels closer to sunlight. It’s wonderful for those darker days. Make sure to get a high-CRI led, that’s what really makes the difference in my opinion. Cheap leds will have a narrow frequency band, high CRI is what makes the reflected light feel more real. I use a cpu heatsink with silent fan to keep the led cool. [0] https://aliexpress.com/item/4000393264115.html https://aliexpress.com/item/4000393264115.html (48W warm white)
- wincy 4y ago
  Fascinating, I’d be interested in seeing what ten or even twenty of these could do to a room. I’m curious how many lux I could get in a room without tripping a breaker. The added benefit is I don’t have to run a space heater!
  - andruby 4y ago
    Honestly, a single 50W led is more than enough for an office sized room. That’s not a lot of heat. We’ve got 16A circuits at 220V here, so you could do about 70 of those before tripping a breaker :D
    - wheels 4y ago
      > Honestly, a single 50W led is more than enough for an office sized room. You're talking about something very different than the original poster then. They mentioned something more in the 400 watt range. I have around 70 watts of LEDs (split between 7 bulbs) in my small office (7 square meters), and am considering boosting that significantly. 50 watts I would put in the range of "normal bright lighting" (it's approximately the equivalent of one halogen floor lamp). 400 watts gets into "trying to simulate sunlight for therapeutic reasons"-territory.
- wingworks 4y ago
  How do you power your 48W LED? (i'm looking to create the same setup)
wpietri 4y ago
Could you please tell us more about your bulbs? Like you, I found a huge improvement in mood if I use light cues to help convince my body that I live in an eternal late spring. So far I've used Hue bulbs, as I love their color temperature range and the ease of programming. (For me it helps that a plausible day-night cycle just happens in my house.) But I've wondered if daylight-like lumens would be even better. And Hue is cost-prohibitive for that level of light.
- wincy 4y ago
  I use Hue Bulbs in the rest of my house and they slowly dim in the evening, although you’re absolutely right that it’d cost thousands to buy enough hue bulbs. You’re better off buying dumb bulbs for daytime then equipping the rest of the house with Hue for a few hundred. I just went to Home Depot and bought the 8-packs of 100W (13W) equivalent, 5000K, 1600 lumen non dimmable LED bulbs from Feit Electric. Screwed those into a 4-Way light ceiling fan using 4 7-way splitters. I bought a big 10,000 lumen, 100W corn bulb (with no fan) at a Menards, and screwed that into an old floor lamp I had sitting around. This was actually my first try before I did the wider array of lights, but it wasn’t bright enough by itself. The light from this is also “dirtier” and depending on your webcam it might show lines as it’ll refresh at 60hz or 120hz or something like that, and make your Zoom calls look like you live in a CRT. I know a lot of people talk about high CRI bulbs when you get into the weeds in this sort of stuff, but I didn’t want to make perfect the enemy of good here. If you spent a little more you could buy dimmable bulbs instead, although it’d probably be easier depending on your hookup to just selectively shut off some of the bulbs to accomplish the same goal. More holistically, for day night cycling, I’ve also started taking 0.3mg of melatonin (don’t take more than this, your body doesn’t need it, google it if you’re interested). I’ve found it helps me get to bed earlier and stay asleep until morning, where I’d wake up sometimes.
  - tommica 4y ago
    Isn't the electricity cost of those insane?
    - 4y ago
Aiedail 4y ago
Have you ever tried a bright environment and dark mode monitor? I'm working with this one about 3 years and it makes me both relax and comfortable.
- wincy 4y ago
  Maybe it’s just that my monitors are too dark, but when I try this everything just looks too washed out and I can’t really tell what I’m looking at. Switching to light mode was more a side effect of the increased lighting than anything.
wheels 4y ago
I'm interested in your light setup, particularly if you happen to use high-CRI bulbs. It also took me ages to realize how large of an effect SAD had on me. I grew up in Texas, where it wasn't much of a thing, but went to college in Michigan and then moved to Germany (where I've been for 20 years) and it took me multiple years to notice the pattern of only struggling with what I'd previously dubbed "burn out" in the winter. That I used to visit Texas every Christmas masked the effect for a while since it gave me something of a reset during the shortest days of the year. Now I manage with a combination of what I'd thought of as redonkulous amounts of lighting (20-ish bulbs in my living room, 7 in my small office), and usually 1+ months away from Berlin in the winter. It's only been relatively recent that going to your extent in terms of lumens has been possible. I was previously pushing 1000w of halogen lighting in my living room, and going to a multiple of that felt like it got into extremely wasteful territory. (There is the reasonable counterargument that in winter, all of the lighting watts also heat the apartment, but I use my lighting setup for a lot of months where I don't also need heating...) Do you also go for high-CRI bulbs? That's been a limiting factor for me at times is that I don't like the spectrum of cheaper LEDs (or CFLs) and often sourcing high-watt, high-CRI bulbs can be tricky. (I was late in switching to LEDs in general, having previously stockpiled halogen bulbs before they were banned in Europe, but a HN comment a couple years ago turned me on to high-CRI bulbs, which was a game-changer for me.)
- wheels 4y ago
  To add a couple concrete questions: - Did you experiment with any of the super high powered single LEDs? (e.g. 200-500w) - How big a problem is monitor glare? Do you have a special monitor (e.g. Studio Display)? I have a 400 nit monitor (brightest 42" IPS monitor at the time I bought it), and I'm worried about going all in on lighting, and then not being able to effectively being able to use my monitor.
  - wincy 4y ago
    I haven’t used any super high powered LEDs mostly because I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to this. I spent $35 on a clearance corn bulb that uses 100W and outputs 10,000 lumens, but I’m not sure I’d recommend them as the light output seems “dirtier” (i.e. it flickers in webcams). Buying $120 worth of 1600 lumen each bulbs was incremental and I bought an 8 pack every few weeks until I’d filled all my light sockets. I’m using ~400-450 nits brightness monitors and it’s fine in light mode. I can make things out in dark mode but it’s less pleasant. I don’t get monitor glare but maybe that’s due to positioning? I have the corn bulb up and to the left of me and the 28 bulbs are stuck into the ceiling fan (which looks silly but works!)
skeletal88 4y ago
Can you not use random acronyms without explaining what they are? Why do you expect that everyone knows what SAD means in your current context? I get it when someone mentions AWS or MSFT or LED on a tech site.. but "SAD syndrome" ?
- MildlySerious 4y ago
  Seasonal Affective Disorder, for anyone else wondering. Agree with avoiding "random" acryonyms if possible.
  - wildpeaks 4y ago
    I agree, the rule of thumb I try to stick to regarding acronyms is adding the definition in parenthesis the first time it's used (although a footnote would work too).
- IshKebab 4y ago
  SAD is a very well known acronym.
  - weberer 4y ago
    It certainly is here in the northern latitudes. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone in Florida has never heard of it.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I'm dumb, and for a minute I thought the parent was putting a lot of emphasis on their sadness during the winter. This specific acronym is IMO a bit too appropriate for the subject.
  - adql 4y ago
    Based on what ?
    - IshKebab 4y ago
KronisLV 4y ago
> I bought some higher brightness monitors but am starting to realize all those years of using dark mode was just lending itself to me spending 8 hours a day working in a dark room and was making me depressed, especially in the winter. One possible detriment to this idea is probably now staring at a bright monitor for 8 hours a day. Considering that outside is also somewhat bright normally, it shouldn't be that significant of a problem, but then again, I've noticed that I blink less frequently when using a computer.
rpozarickij 4y ago
> higher brightness monitors There's also an emerging market of RLCD (reflective LCD) monitors which don't use internal backlight but instead rely on external light. If the monitor receives enough light the image is pretty sharp (they _need_ external light to be usable). They are mostly available in bigger sizes but their resolution isn't great yet (I haven't seen higher than 1080p). But it seems that due to different technologies used, the text should be quite smooth and not that pixelated.

by wincy 4y ago

kitsunesoba 4y ago

The monitor brightness struggle was something I encountered first a 3 or so years ago when I moved into place with big windows that got a lot of natural light during the latter half of the day, even in the winter. Garden variety 250-350 nit displays really struggle with that kind of light, even if it's indirect and the screen in question is matte. 400-450 nits I've found is about the minimum for universally usable display brightness indoors, assuming either a matte finish or good anti-glare coating (e.g. like that on newer MacBooks). If it's the sadly far more common mirror-type glossy displays found on damn near every laptop and non-enthusiast/pro desktop monitor out there, you're going to need 500-600 nits to cut through the glare.

wincy 4y ago
This has absolutely been my struggle since upgrading my lighting. It’s also so difficult to find data about how bright a monitor actually is! I bought some 1440p “gaming monitors” that I think are around 450 nits, and these are just barely bright enough for my newly lit up office.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  This one has pretty decent brightness and comes with great blacks too. And the widescreen format is great for development. The 34" is basically an extended 27", whereas the 38" is an extended 32" https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/alienware-34-curved-qd-oled-gaming-monitor-aw3423dw/apd/210-bdsz/monitors-monitor-accessories https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/alienware-34-curved-qd-oled-...
  - rxyz 4y ago
    Alienware QD-OLEDs have a special pixel layout which isn't good for text
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      It’s probably not as much of a problem on macOS and Linux where the majority of apps will obey system text rendering settings (and macOS defaults to non-subpixel AA anyway) but under Windows everybody does their own thing for text rendering regardless of how you’ve set up ClearType and it’s a mess.
nextaccountic 4y ago
Is it possible to have a 500 or 600 nits display, but still have the lowest brightness settings be equal or lower than the lowest settings of a 250 nits display? That's my biggest issue
- dotancohen 4y ago
  Going below 50% brightness on _most_ monitors brings the flickering into the realm that many humans can perceive. This is because the physical brightness cannot actually be controlled, so PWM is used to adjust perceived brightness.
  - onli 4y ago
    That is not true for many displays. Have a look at reviews, whether there is pwm control/flickering is part of all(?) professional reviews now.
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      Terrific, that is great to know. I might update my monitors if so.
      - imhoguy 4y ago
        First thing when I buy any monitor is "flicker-free" keyword. If you got one with PWM then the best you can do is to max out the monitor LED brightness and reduce screen brightness/gamma with an app.
      - onli 4y ago
        :) Maybe an aside, but for notebooks, I know that notebookcheck always has a section about this in their reviews. https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Dragonfly-Folio-13-5-G3-convertible-review-No-more-Snapdragon-or-Windows-on-ARM.673537.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Dragonfly-Folio-13-5-G3-con... for example - and even if PWM is detected, they check how high the frequency is (high enough and it should bother no one). For monitors, RTINGs.com checks for PWM, https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/dell/alienware-aw3423dw https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/dell/alienware-aw3423... as an example (like imhoguy mentioned, flicker free is the keyword to search for).

ezconnect 4y ago

I actually dont understand why other people can work in a dimly lit space and having dark mode on their monitor. It make feel so lazy and gloomy.

sneak 4y ago
Not everyone's bodies work the same. Working too long in a brightly lit room makes me extremely tired. The only way I can work long hours is in simulated twilight.
- wincy 4y ago
  For me it’s an issue of seasonal depression. I get really agitated over the weeks and months of it being drab during the winter months, until I feel severe cabin fever in January or so and my mental state gets really, really bad, like “I’m going to book a flight to Miami and leave right now everything else be damned” sort of crazy. It’s not really a fun time. I don’t mind working in a dark room, but if I do it for weeks at a time I’ll start to have problems if I’m not getting bright lights at other times (which during winter there aren’t many opportunities for). It also has the hilarious added effect of totally blowing out my laptops webcam and making me look like I have an angelic halo of light atop my head.
bcrosby95 4y ago
I come alive at night in a dark room. It makes me feel like the only things left in the world are just me and whatever I'm doing, giving me complete focus.
- djtango 4y ago
  Different strokes, but totally on the same page. A behaviour I've observed in myself is I gravitate towards big windows and like to work in an environment where I feel I have lots of space, but I am very happy working in complete darkness (but also value sunlight)
TeMPOraL 4y ago
In my case, it's either or: either dark room and dimmed screen or (more recently) dark mode on everything, or bright room and light mode. By bright I really mean bright - maybe not SAD-mitigation level like the OP, but I do turn on extra lights during the day, particularly when its cloudy. What I can't tolerate is "half-light" - dimly lit space, afternoon/evening levels of daylight. Or the standard level of light most people have. Or warm light. That's one is actually a point of contention with my wife - she prefers warm light, I prefer cold. We compromised on "neutral", which has a benefit of not screwing with colors like warm does. It's tolerable for me, though I still occasionally notice how it yellow-tints everything. By can't tolerate, I mean that in underlit rooms, I struggle to stay awake. Really struggle - I start to yawn uncontrollably, my mind gets hazy, and I need to pump myself with some stimulants (i.e. caffeine, usually) just to be able to function. Add more lights, or make the room dark, and I'm OK again.

_8j50 4y ago

That's so many 100w bulbs, do you wear sunglasses indoors or soemthing? Very interesting.

bombcar 4y ago
It’s nothing compared to the brightness of outside (even on a cloudy day) unless you stare directly into the soul of the corncob.
wincy 4y ago
They’re actually 13W or so? I use a 7-way splitter on 4 bulb slots made for higher watt incandescent bulbs. That helps a lot, then use a corn bulb I bought that uses 100W and puts out 10,000 lumens. It still only gets the room to 7,000 lux, which is less than a bright day. My Lux meter clocked 50,000 lux streaming through the window in October!

andruby 4y ago

I added a diy 50W LED that shines on the white ceiling of my office room. The diffuse bounced light feels closer to sunlight. It’s wonderful for those darker days. Make sure to get a high-CRI led, that’s what really makes the difference in my opinion. Cheap leds will have a narrow frequency band, high CRI is what makes the reflected light feel more real. I use a cpu heatsink with silent fan to keep the led cool. [0] https://aliexpress.com/item/4000393264115.html https://aliexpress.com/item/4000393264115.html (48W warm white)

wincy 4y ago
Fascinating, I’d be interested in seeing what ten or even twenty of these could do to a room. I’m curious how many lux I could get in a room without tripping a breaker. The added benefit is I don’t have to run a space heater!
- andruby 4y ago
  Honestly, a single 50W led is more than enough for an office sized room. That’s not a lot of heat. We’ve got 16A circuits at 220V here, so you could do about 70 of those before tripping a breaker :D
  - wheels 4y ago
    > Honestly, a single 50W led is more than enough for an office sized room. You're talking about something very different than the original poster then. They mentioned something more in the 400 watt range. I have around 70 watts of LEDs (split between 7 bulbs) in my small office (7 square meters), and am considering boosting that significantly. 50 watts I would put in the range of "normal bright lighting" (it's approximately the equivalent of one halogen floor lamp). 400 watts gets into "trying to simulate sunlight for therapeutic reasons"-territory.
wingworks 4y ago
How do you power your 48W LED? (i'm looking to create the same setup)

wpietri 4y ago

Could you please tell us more about your bulbs? Like you, I found a huge improvement in mood if I use light cues to help convince my body that I live in an eternal late spring. So far I've used Hue bulbs, as I love their color temperature range and the ease of programming. (For me it helps that a plausible day-night cycle just happens in my house.) But I've wondered if daylight-like lumens would be even better. And Hue is cost-prohibitive for that level of light.

wincy 4y ago
I use Hue Bulbs in the rest of my house and they slowly dim in the evening, although you’re absolutely right that it’d cost thousands to buy enough hue bulbs. You’re better off buying dumb bulbs for daytime then equipping the rest of the house with Hue for a few hundred. I just went to Home Depot and bought the 8-packs of 100W (13W) equivalent, 5000K, 1600 lumen non dimmable LED bulbs from Feit Electric. Screwed those into a 4-Way light ceiling fan using 4 7-way splitters. I bought a big 10,000 lumen, 100W corn bulb (with no fan) at a Menards, and screwed that into an old floor lamp I had sitting around. This was actually my first try before I did the wider array of lights, but it wasn’t bright enough by itself. The light from this is also “dirtier” and depending on your webcam it might show lines as it’ll refresh at 60hz or 120hz or something like that, and make your Zoom calls look like you live in a CRT. I know a lot of people talk about high CRI bulbs when you get into the weeds in this sort of stuff, but I didn’t want to make perfect the enemy of good here. If you spent a little more you could buy dimmable bulbs instead, although it’d probably be easier depending on your hookup to just selectively shut off some of the bulbs to accomplish the same goal. More holistically, for day night cycling, I’ve also started taking 0.3mg of melatonin (don’t take more than this, your body doesn’t need it, google it if you’re interested). I’ve found it helps me get to bed earlier and stay asleep until morning, where I’d wake up sometimes.
- tommica 4y ago
  Isn't the electricity cost of those insane?
  - 4y ago

Aiedail 4y ago

Have you ever tried a bright environment and dark mode monitor? I'm working with this one about 3 years and it makes me both relax and comfortable.

wincy 4y ago
Maybe it’s just that my monitors are too dark, but when I try this everything just looks too washed out and I can’t really tell what I’m looking at. Switching to light mode was more a side effect of the increased lighting than anything.

wheels 4y ago

I'm interested in your light setup, particularly if you happen to use high-CRI bulbs. It also took me ages to realize how large of an effect SAD had on me. I grew up in Texas, where it wasn't much of a thing, but went to college in Michigan and then moved to Germany (where I've been for 20 years) and it took me multiple years to notice the pattern of only struggling with what I'd previously dubbed "burn out" in the winter. That I used to visit Texas every Christmas masked the effect for a while since it gave me something of a reset during the shortest days of the year. Now I manage with a combination of what I'd thought of as redonkulous amounts of lighting (20-ish bulbs in my living room, 7 in my small office), and usually 1+ months away from Berlin in the winter. It's only been relatively recent that going to your extent in terms of lumens has been possible. I was previously pushing 1000w of halogen lighting in my living room, and going to a multiple of that felt like it got into extremely wasteful territory. (There is the reasonable counterargument that in winter, all of the lighting watts also heat the apartment, but I use my lighting setup for a lot of months where I don't also need heating...) Do you also go for high-CRI bulbs? That's been a limiting factor for me at times is that I don't like the spectrum of cheaper LEDs (or CFLs) and often sourcing high-watt, high-CRI bulbs can be tricky. (I was late in switching to LEDs in general, having previously stockpiled halogen bulbs before they were banned in Europe, but a HN comment a couple years ago turned me on to high-CRI bulbs, which was a game-changer for me.)

wheels 4y ago
To add a couple concrete questions: - Did you experiment with any of the super high powered single LEDs? (e.g. 200-500w) - How big a problem is monitor glare? Do you have a special monitor (e.g. Studio Display)? I have a 400 nit monitor (brightest 42" IPS monitor at the time I bought it), and I'm worried about going all in on lighting, and then not being able to effectively being able to use my monitor.
- wincy 4y ago
  I haven’t used any super high powered LEDs mostly because I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to this. I spent $35 on a clearance corn bulb that uses 100W and outputs 10,000 lumens, but I’m not sure I’d recommend them as the light output seems “dirtier” (i.e. it flickers in webcams). Buying $120 worth of 1600 lumen each bulbs was incremental and I bought an 8 pack every few weeks until I’d filled all my light sockets. I’m using ~400-450 nits brightness monitors and it’s fine in light mode. I can make things out in dark mode but it’s less pleasant. I don’t get monitor glare but maybe that’s due to positioning? I have the corn bulb up and to the left of me and the 28 bulbs are stuck into the ceiling fan (which looks silly but works!)

skeletal88 4y ago

Can you not use random acronyms without explaining what they are? Why do you expect that everyone knows what SAD means in your current context? I get it when someone mentions AWS or MSFT or LED on a tech site.. but "SAD syndrome" ?

MildlySerious 4y ago
Seasonal Affective Disorder, for anyone else wondering. Agree with avoiding "random" acryonyms if possible.
- wildpeaks 4y ago
  I agree, the rule of thumb I try to stick to regarding acronyms is adding the definition in parenthesis the first time it's used (although a footnote would work too).
IshKebab 4y ago
SAD is a very well known acronym.
- weberer 4y ago
  It certainly is here in the northern latitudes. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone in Florida has never heard of it.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I'm dumb, and for a minute I thought the parent was putting a lot of emphasis on their sadness during the winter. This specific acronym is IMO a bit too appropriate for the subject.
- adql 4y ago
  Based on what ?
  - IshKebab 4y ago

KronisLV 4y ago

> I bought some higher brightness monitors but am starting to realize all those years of using dark mode was just lending itself to me spending 8 hours a day working in a dark room and was making me depressed, especially in the winter. One possible detriment to this idea is probably now staring at a bright monitor for 8 hours a day. Considering that outside is also somewhat bright normally, it shouldn't be that significant of a problem, but then again, I've noticed that I blink less frequently when using a computer.

rpozarickij 4y ago

> higher brightness monitors There's also an emerging market of RLCD (reflective LCD) monitors which don't use internal backlight but instead rely on external light. If the monitor receives enough light the image is pretty sharp (they _need_ external light to be usable). They are mostly available in bigger sizes but their resolution isn't great yet (I haven't seen higher than 1080p). But it seems that due to different technologies used, the text should be quite smooth and not that pixelated.