Chances are, you’re using your display at its factory settings. And that could be a potentially damaging situation for your eyes. Most displays (TVs and computer monitors) have their brightness and contrast settings cranked to an almost absolutely absurd level that, with prolonged usage, will cause your eyes to develop irritation or a burning sensation.
I spend quite a bit of time in front of my computer, and have been experiencing eye fatigue for several months. Recently, I’ve dropped the brightness level on all my computer displays and it seems to help. (I also use Nocturne to change my display to grayscale when working during the evening hours.)
Time will tell if both these changes will relieve my fatigue, but, in my case, I fear that permanent eye damage has already occurred.
-Krishna
I worked with a guy that used to install video systems. He said that the proper way to adjust a CRT (it was a while ago, predated LCD) was to turn brightness and contrast all the way down, turn up the brightness just until you could distinguish the active area of the display from the inactive and then use the contrast to bring up the picture. You should need little, if any, additional adjustment to the brightness. FWIW.
You motivated me to turn down my brightness in my monitors, one to 30/100, and one to 40/100 (they look roughly the same this way). They were both set to full 100.
Having spent a day with the brightness at half its value, my eyes are feeling much more relaxed when viewing my displays. I should have done this months ago.
I wholeheartedly agree with Andrew’s response, to a reasonable degree, above.
I used to deal (many years ago), exclusively with CRTs. We we told, then, for them to keep their life, to not lift the brightness/contrast above 50%, as the life-span of those monitors/displays would shorten dramatically.
It’s still somewhat true (without going into the schematics of things, but it also can apply with LCDs).
Another tip that we were given (as you’re a wallpaper aficionado), not to use a backdrop that uses bright/burning colors – ala reds/oranges/yellows/whites.
If you have a backdrop that uses cool colors, like black, greys, dark/royal blues, etcetera, that also helps in the long run.