Working in the dark? Your neck and eyes notice
Nicola Tik
Sometimes the light just goes while you are still working, the afternoon fades or the room was dim to begin with, and the screen glows away in front of you. By the end of it your eyes feel tired and your neck is stiff, and it is easy to pin that on the hours. Often, though, it is the lighting doing it, and that is an easy thing to put right.
Here is the bit that surprises people. Your eyes are not really bothered by a dim room on its own. What tires them is the gap between a bright screen and dark surroundings. Your pupils are caught between the two, constantly adjusting as your gaze moves from the glowing screen to the shadows around it and back. On top of that, when the light is poor you instinctively lean in to pick out detail, and your head and neck drift forward with you. So a dark room quietly pulls on your eyes and your neck at the same time.
Bad lighting has a second trick. When light bounces off the screen as glare, you shift your head to find the one angle where you can actually see, then hold that slightly turned or tilted position for ages without noticing. It is a small, awkward pose held for a long time, which is exactly the sort of thing your neck grumbles about later. In other words, your neck often ends up paying for the lighting rather than the work itself.
The simplest fix is to close that brightness gap. You could try adjusting your screen brightness so it roughly matches the room rather than blazing out of the gloom, and adding a soft lamp so the space around you is not much darker than the screen. A gently lit room with a screen to match is far easier on your eyes than one bright rectangle floating in the dark.
A little rearranging goes a long way. Setting your screen side-on to a window, rather than facing it or with your back to it, cuts both glare and the bright-behind effect. Angling the screen away from overhead lights helps too, and a small desk lamp pointed at your paperwork rather than your screen gives you light where you need it without the bounce.
Every so often, look up from the screen to something across the room and let your eyes relax, which also nudges you back upright. If your neck feels tight after a stretch of squinting into a dim screen, VIDA has a short guided stretch video you can follow at your own pace to ease it out.