Lamp for Programming - Save Your Eyes
Lamp for Programming - Save Your Eyes

I can easily guess that you are using your computer every single day, which actually means that you have some eyes problems, because you are sitting too long there. And your eyes are always tired you have some eyes itching and you actually don’t know how to improve it. This is why in this post I want to talk about one of two most important things, that will help your eyes in a long run. And it is of course lamp and lighting.

And actually a lot of people don’t think about lighting at all. They think about better Macbook maybe for the work or just a better monitor. But it's never a lighting. And actually if you right now have a light in your room which looks like this, then you have a problem.

Before / After

What you see on the left is actually the most typical light, that you can find in any flat. This is a just a normal ceiling light. And it is not only the lens of the camera that shows how bad light it is. It is also the lens of your eye, which is working with the same light every single day.

If you have the light similar to this, you have a big problem.

Best light that exists

So what light is the best to work at the computer? And actually the sun light which is completely free is the best. It is a natural light, it is the best for our eyes, but it is not suitable for us always. It is the best when it is not too harsh, but it can also be dark in the room especially in the evening. And you can’t work with sun at the night at all.

This is why you need to buy a lamp. And actually the main problem that a lot of people just jump to the google and they find some fancy lamp. They don't understand what exactly they need from the lamp or from lighting to help their eyes at all. And long ago I did exactly the same. I just jumped to google and searched for some lamp. And it didn't work, because first of all you need to understand the basics. When we talk about light we just need to know two properties.

CRI Index

First of all it is Color Index or Color Rendering Index, which is called CRI and in the sun it is 100. And typically in our flats you have something like 85 or even less which is much worse than a sun. So actually we want our lighting with the best CRI possible.

The main problem is the typical lamp bulb that you will buy will be 85 CRI. And you want something better. And actually it is really difficult to find high CRI. And when I started to use my camera I directly saw how bad my light was. This is why actually all lighting, which is related to videography or photography will be much better, but obviously it is more expensive. So it makes a lot of sense to buy not some fancy lamp, but lamp with the high CRI Index.

Color temperature

The other property that you must know about lighting is color temperature. It can be quite low like for example 2000 and then you have really yellowish color.

Color temp

And the typical color which will be near the sun is 5600. So actually for the lamp that I am using color temperature 5600 right now. And it is looking similar to a day light.

So I would recommend you to buy a lamp, where you can change the color temperature.

In this case you can adjust the just color temperature for your eyes. And here are two lamps that I tried and I can recommend. First of all is the china brand which is called YOUNGNUO 300. This is really nice lamp, but it doesn’t give a lot of light. And it is actually really nice lamp for the small working space.

But after some time I needed better light. This is why I bought FalconEyes 20D. And it is really similar to the first variant, but much more powerful. And both these lamps have near 95 CRI and you can just color temperature there, which means they're really comfortable to work with. The main problem is that these lamps are for photography and videography, which actually means you need a stand or you need to think how you will adjust it in your place.

Ambient light

And the last thing about lighting, that you must know is called ambient light. For programming you can find lots of articles that ambient light is really cool. The main idea is that you don't have any light in your room so it is completely dark. And you have lighting stripes somewhere behind your monitor with low brightness.

Ambient light

So the light in the room is super dark and ambient light is similar to your monitor. But actually this type of lighting didn't help me at all. I have eyes tiredness after using that. This is why I switched to normal lamp.

I hope that this post brought you understanding how important lighting is. And actually if you want to know how to ask about salary raise inside a company make sure to check this post also.