Give Your Eyes a Break: How to Choose the Right Blue Light Glasses
Staring at your monitor for hours at a time? Computer glasses might help. Here’s what you need to know.
As we spend more and more time at home and staring at screens, we’re becoming increasingly vulnerable to eye strain. You’ve probably already heard of blue light and how it can hurt your eyes, and maybe a pair of blue light blocking glasses caught your attention. But it’s important to understand that there are lots of options for reducing eye strain when staring at screens, and they go beyond just getting new lenses. Here’s what you should know about blue light, and some of your choices for reducing your exposure to it.
What Is Blue Light?
On the most basic level, blue light is exactly what it sounds like: light that’s blue. That’s not the full picture, though, and this is where light and color theory come into play, along with concepts like color temperature, Planck’s Constant, and the black body radiation curve. Without going too far into the weeds, you simply need to understand one fact about light: The color white isn’t universal.
There is no singular white, but a whole range of visible light that counts as white. Depending on the lighting conditions and what is radiating and reflecting light, white light can appear very yellow (warm) or blue (cool) in color. For instance, the light coming from an incandescent LED light bulb is warmer than the light coming from a computer monitor. This is called color temperature, and it’s measured in kelvin (K).
What we perceive as white light shifts along a range of generally 2,700K to 7,000K. Confusingly, warmer light has a lower color temperature than cooler light, with the almost fiery glow of tungsten hitting around 2,800K and overcast sunlight hitting about 6,000K.
Computer monitors typically set white at a very cool temperature to emulate natural sunlight, close to 6,500K. That means the light coming from your screen is quite blue, which you’ll notice if you look from a web page with a white background to a warm light bulb. Blue light has been accused of causing eye strain and even eye damage, so naturally the solution should be to warm that light up before it hits your eyes.
Is Blue Light That Bad?
Here’s where it gets tricky, with lots of promises from manufacturers of blue light blocking glasses that don’t necessarily hold up to medical scrutiny. Essentially, blue light can’t directly damage your eyesight. The American Academy of Opthalmology notes that ultraviolet radiation can damage eyes, but that computer monitors and other screens don’t actually emit that kind of radiation. The whites are cool, but they aren’t actually harmful. In fact, the AAO doesn’t recommend any special eyewear for computer use.
This doesn’t mean you should simply ignore the effects of staring at a screen all day. While the radiation might not hurt your eyes, you’re fixating on a powerful light source a few inches to a few feet from your eyes for long periods of time, and that can cause eye strain. Your eyes can become dry, irritated, blurry, or even produce headaches when you look at screens for hours on end. Blue light blocking technology can help reduce that strain by making the light appear more soothing and less bright.
The AAO recommends the 20–20–20 rule, where every 20 minutes you should look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds to give your eyes a break. It’s a good habit to get into, but it isn’t always realistic, and it isn’t the only thing you can do to help your eyes.
I sometimes get light-sensitive headaches, and I’ve found that tinted lenses can help reduce them. For that, blue light blocking glasses are very useful. They warm up the light, blocking out a bit to give your eyes a rest. They can relieve eye strain, which is their real value rather than the promise of simply blocking out blue light.
So you might in fact be well served by getting some blue light blocking glasses. There are a few other options to consider, as well. With that in mind, read on for products that can (and cannot) help alleviate screen strain on your eyes.
Gunnar Glasses
Gunnar is one of the most established brands for “gaming glasses,” or blue light blocking computer glasses targeting gamers. If you go to major video game events like PAX, you’ve probably seen a pair.
Gunnar offers a variety of frames and tint types, including the slight Clear lens that blocks 35 percent of blue light while not tinting colors too much, the more intense Amber lens that blocks 65 percent of blue light, and even transition lenses that are tinted indoors and get darker like sunglasses when you’re outside. These glasses are available standard or with a prescription, if you wear corrective lenses.
We’ve reviewed a few Gunnar glasses, and each pair we’ve tested has been nicely made, sturdy, and comfortable. They can get a bit pricey, especially if you get prescription lenses, but they’re quality glasses.
Jins Screen
Jins is a Japanese glasses company that also makes blue light blocking lenses, which it calls Jins Screen. They block out 25 percent of blue light, with a fairly modest tint.
Based on the Frontswitch glasses we reviewed, Jins frames are exceptionally well made, which, along with Japanese manufacturing accounts for their high prices. They’re good glasses if you’re willing to splurge.
Zenni Optical Blockz
Zenni Optical is a glasses brand that lets you order inexpensive frames and lenses over the web. If you have your prescription, you can simply enter the numbers into a form online and your glasses will come a few weeks later. With prices starting at $7, I’ve sworn by Zenni for stocking up on “backup” glasses, though its pricier frames and lenses are generally pretty well made.
Zenni Optical offers Blokz, its own blue blocking lens technology. Blokz lenses start at $17, so you can get prescription blue blocking glasses for as little as $25.
Amazon Abounds With Cheap Choices
You can get inexpensive blue light blocking glasses at Amazon.com and from other retailers, though you won’t have the benefit of prescription lenses. We also haven’t looked at any of these glasses ourselves, so we can’t attest to their lens or frame quality. We have, however, noticed an interesting pattern: Many of them are the same.
Those Livho glasses above appear to be identical to the Meetsun glasses a few entries below them on Amazon’s page. We suspect most of these glasses come from the same factory, and the different brand names don’t mean much. If you don’t recognize the brand and the company doesn’t appear to have its own site, you can expect a generic experience.
Skip the Specs—Try f.lux
You don’t need glasses to warm up your screen. f. lux is a useful piece of software that adjusts your computer’s color temperature, letting you shift everything on your screen to look warmer. It can even be set with sunrise/sunset timers to make the screen warmer at night to reduce eye strain when it’s the only source of light for you, while keeping colors untouched when there’s daylight out.
It’s an excellent tool for dealing with monitor-based eye strain without glasses. Just make sure you disable it when you want to watch a movie or play a game so the colors are accurate.
Do Not Get: BluBlocker Sunglasses
Ironically, the popular-in-drug-stores brand BluBlocker is not advisable for reducing blue light when staring at a screen.
BluBlockers are sunglasses, and their tints are too strong for comfortably looking at your monitor. If you use too strong a tint, you can strain your eyes in the other direction, forcing them to deal with too little light instead of too much.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
