What type of lamp (or light/lumen) do you use in your home office?
Hi! I'm wondering what lamps other devs are using in their home office while working.
I have this thing in my eyes called "eye floaters" and I find it particularly annoying when I'm in very bright environments.
Tips are more than welcome!
Daylight. I'm fortunate to have 270 degree windows.
If the evening and still working, two 16W (100W equivalent) floor standing lights from IKEA, of which one or both may be turned on, behind me, not in field of vision, cream or mild yellow.
I found floaters worse when working with dual monitors and regularly flicking my eyes between screens. I now primarily work with one screen, a very standard ThinkPad experience; focus on a single screen has also brought a workflow change. If needing an additional screen I have a projector (meetings, thinking, walking around) or an external screen which I almost exclusively reserve for video calls and no more (workflow change).
+1 for Philips Hue - just get E27 bulbs that you can pair with any style of lamp you like. Note that now there are "standard" 800 lumen and 1100 and 1600 Lumen versions - but confusingly the bigger lumens are not for the whole color spectrum. You need to check tests/youtube videos if they are worth for your use case/color preferences.
You could get colored bulbs for much cheaper, but the build quality/stability/compability is unmatched.
Generally I find colored lights to be awesome - not only can you set warmth (from striking white if you are looking for something in the room, to warmest yellow when relaxing) seeing your surroundings in different colors per night does add a lot to your mood.
I tend to notice those "eye floaters" more as I get older. I find that white backgrounds on the screen make them a lot more noticeable, so I now use dark modes in some apps and have changed my desktop's background colour to a darker colour.
> I have this thing in my eyes called "eye floaters" and I find it particularly annoying when I'm in very bright environments.
They become more prominent, as we get older.
I use one of these: https://www.taotronics.com/products/tt-dl16-led-desk-lamp
Works fairly well, and cheaper than many.
I had to put a sticky pad on the wireless charger, though. The teeny rubber corners are worthless, and everything slides off.
13’ x 9’ room with:
3 x 1600 lumen daylight bulbs in a ceiling fixture on a dimmer switch.
2 x 1100 lumen Phillips hue color bulbs in a lamp behind my laptop screen
1 x 2400 lumen color led strip for under desk lighting
It’s decently bright in here when everything is 100%. I normally dim the lights to a comfortable level depending on how I feel.
For late-night D&D, I go with dim yellow lighting and turn off the ceiling lights.
I like to have things well-lit, but only with indirect light and no "hot spots" that I find distracting. What works best for me:
* North side of the house, so no direct sunlight and nice even shadows
* Lots of lamps - currently have four lamps around the room, some pointing up at the ceiling and some with large shades to even out the light.
* Warm colours - All the lamps are incandescent or around 3-4k kelvin.
* Timers on all the lights - Old school mechanical timers - I always forget to turn things off at the end of the day, so it's nice to just leave and not worry about it anymore. Also nice for the AM, coming into the room already lit up and looking cozy.
I've got two IKEA FLOAT Led panels on my ceiling, each 2400 lumen. The panels can be adjusted in Kelvin (2200 to 4000) and are dimmable, so when it's evening and I need to get some work done I turn them a lot more yellow to not mess with my sleep rhythm. I find making the room very bright helps a lot with waking up and focus, compared to when I had only one or two bulbs as lighting. It does take some getting used to as some have already pointed out here.
I've seen more people interested in this topic so I'm adding some recent links I've came across:
https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/
https://blog.plover.com/tech/corn-bulbs.html
https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens
My office/music studio is in my finished basement. I use two open bulb fixtures, 4 bulbs each, with Sylvania TruWave soft whites (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MWYMZCK), on an LED dimmer switch set to around 60% (most of the time).
I used to use a bulb from Prometheus (https://darksucks.com/products/ultra-high-cri-led-lightbulb) that had excellent color rendering, but they were expensive, and despite their 3 year warranty, half the bulbs failed in 6 months. I finally got tired of asking for replacements and just gave up.
I have a Phillips Hue dimmable on the ceiling.
I can set it to warm, and also dim in the evening (or if I notice that my balding forehead is glowing too much during a video call) :-)
I had floaters if the light source was in my field of vision (ex: desk lamp near my screen).
I use two or three high CRI (95+) yuji LED bulbs that are 3500K (warm daylight) and around 1100lmns. These are in lamps as side lighting facing away from me (so that the light shines on the walls).
In the mornings I also have some bright down lighting that is a bit cooler - probably around 5000K, the light from these is noticeable at the top of my vision to help me wake up and become alert.
For non-work lighting I have Philips Hue bulbs everywhere and are very happy with those.
But for very high CRI these bulbs are excellent: https://www.yujiintl.com/high-cri-led-lighting.html
Warm for everything, it's made a huge difference for me—mainly for mood, I find the "corporate" white too sterile. Even better if you can get smart lightbulbs which allow to set the brightness
Warm and neutral white LEDs everywhere except the fridge.
I use cool white there just for the impression of coldness and cleanliness.
I have a pretty cheap LED desk lamp but other than that I just use the ceiling fixtures.
I use a warm colour, almost orange as the main light. When needed I have less warm, but still warm desk-lamp. Like mentioned in a precious comment for me it improves my mood also a lot.
Verilux offers a range of floor and desk lamps that are excellent light sources and even offer variable intensity. Aesthetically not the most pleasing of lamps they more than make up for it with their functionality. Here's a link to one of their floor lamps:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0742GZ9FV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
We installed 4' LED hanging fixtures and mounted them upside down to bounce off the ceiling. It makes a huge difference but requires about 50% more fixtures. It's 1,000 sq feet and around 600w total. We do computer repair so good light is needed. They are 4500k color temp and the work area is "shadowless".
+1 for Philips Hue. Almost all lights in the house and landscaping are colored bulbs / strips. Not related to the floaters, but the upper kitchen cabinets have light strips as well as under the bathroom vanity - both tied to their own philips motion sensors. Just make good night lights when you enter a room.
Statistical outlier: I like it dark.
Basement room with no windows. 5x, 3W "warm white" LED bulbs around the room, all aimed at walls or corners and shaded so there's no direct light anywhere. I can read in this light but others can't see well at all in here and I have to turn on more lights for them.
Hm. I just assumed everyone saw 'floaters'. I see the big ones that float atound and tiny ones that zip along paths (I assume those are blood cells). They can be distracting. I can't look at something white or bright without them being obvious. Do you see static too or is that just me?
-- Philips Hue Gradient Signe Table Lamp - looks good - super super solid base (not knocking it over for sure) - works on BT doesn't need a hub - I like to change the color - color of light drastically changes my mood - I'm sure there are cheap alternatives however this is what I use --
I use the $45 6-packs of LED "T5" lights on Amazon. There are various sellers, I did my whole basement with them. Much better than the old fluorescent lights that were there.
Some of these recommendations are insane, over 1000 lumen per bulb must look like a nuclear bomb went off in your office. I have 3x 300 lumen bulbs at 2700k.
I thought we all just hacked in the dark with hoodies.
100 watt halogen light is the most pleasant to me. Colors look wrong and too dark to me even when I have many, much brighter, high quality LEDs.
I don't work with colour so I prefer warm yellow lighting to white.
Using Phillips warm glow leds for a few years now and no complaints
Floaters is very common for people with myopia. Nothing to be worried about in most cases but can be annoying. If you try to focus on them (or remind yourself that they are there), it gets worse.