What Brightness Should My Monitor Be? | Learn the Benefits of Proper Calibration

The current technology-oriented world gives you no chance to avoid screens. And whether it’s for work or play, you're almost always on your phone or laptop. 

Yes, monitors have simplified work and improved productivity in many ways. However, these monitors also come with drawbacks. Spending a lot of time in front of monitors has consequences on your well-being. Besides strain and fatigue, the screen brightness cause chronic eye problems. 

To avoid such problems, you need to calibrate your monitor brightness settings depending on your environmental conditions. Too much brightness is not only a concern to your well-being but also increases the monitor's power consumption and reduces its lifespan. Therefore, you need to calibrate the default setting of your monitor to the optimum level. So, what brightness should my monitor be? And how do I calibrate it?

Here is how to do it.

What’s the Best Way to Change Your External Monitor Brightness?

An external monitor should have buttons either at the bottom, back, or sides. These are the Main Menu button, Volume button, and brightness button. Locate the button for brightness. Click the plus sign on it to increase brightness and the negative sign to lower the brightness. Confirm from the user manual if you experience difficulties.

Make sure not to increase to too high levels or reduce it to too low. A calibration of between 40% to 60% works best in varied light conditions.

Alternatively, you can change the display brightness of the monitor using a remote control. Open the system menu and look for monitor settings. The display settings have a list of options, and brightness is one of them. Adjust from there the brightness level you want your monitor to have.

Low Brightness vs. High Brightness - Which Is Better?

It is impractical to say low brightness is better than high brightness or high brightness is better than low brightness. Some instances need the monitor brightness to be high, while others require the brightness level to be below. For instance, when working in a dark room, you'll need to lower the monitor's brightness. On the contrary, you'll need the monitor's brightness to be high when working in bright environments.

Too low brightness on bright scenes makes it difficult to read texts. This condition will force you to strain your eyes as you try to read, leading to fatigue and eye strain. Low brightness may also dim blacks as grey in dark scenes, affecting the display quality. This feature has significant effects when gaming.

On the other hand, too high brightness strains eyes, leading to chronic eye strain.

What are the Effects of High Brightness on Monitors?

High brightness on monitors has more harm than good.

The effects of high monitor brightness are listed below.

• High brightness affects your well-being. Too much brightness causes fatigue and eye strain. This problem can extend to headaches, and in severe cases, it can cause chronic eye problems.
• Power Consumption. Using your monitor with high brightness levels increases the monitor's power consumption.
• Monitor's lifespan. High brightness levels, especially in LCD monitors, cause the backlight bulbs to burn early, lowering the monitor's lifespan.

What Are Eye Fatigue Remedies?

The eye strain remedies are listed below.

• Avoid direct sunlight hitting your monitor.
• Maintain an upright sitting posture.
• Adjust your monitor's brightness and contrast settings according to ambient light sensors.
• Take frequent rests and stretches.
• Minimize screen flickering.
• Eliminate or minimize blue light emission. You can put a screen protector on the monitor's screen.
• Use anti-glare screen monitors.

Is Auto-Brightness the Solution? - Can You Automatically Adjust Screen Brightness?

Some monitors have a self-adjusting mechanism for brightness. The monitor's algorithm dictates the ambient light change, analyses it, and responds by either lowering or increasing the brightness.

At the start, the self-adjusting mechanism was inaccurate and ineffective, but developers have made several improvements. The improvements have ensured accurate determination of light intensity and brightness adjustment. 

Further improvements have been observed in Apple's TrueTone viewing mode. This feature allows iOS PCs to detect color and white point changes. It then adjusts the monitor's color temperature and brightness to match the observation.

You can access the auto-brightness feature on your Windows device from the Display option of System Settings. If your device doesn't have it, you can get it from a third-party app such as f.lux.

Why Is Display Calibration So Important?

Just imagine that you took a beautiful panoramic snap and downloaded it to your computer. Only to find out that the blue of the sky or the green of the grass doesn't resemble the one you saw through the viewfinder. Today, it's a lot about watching online movies, snapping digital photos and sharing image files. Color calibrating your monitor is important to get as close to the real thing as possible.

How to Calibrate Brightness?

Turn down the brightness of your monitor as much as possible without making the image seem dim or more difficult to see. If you want to get more precise, you can use a free light measurement app like Lux Light Meter. 300 lux for most rooms is recommended, though you might want to dip as low as 200 in a nearly pitch-black gaming room.

Aside from improving dark scenes and perceived contrast settings, reducing brightness can reduce eye strain. Viewing a very bright monitor in a dim room is not pleasant because your eyes must constantly adjust to deal with the difference in brightness between the display and its surroundings.