Environmental influence on background luminance preference of computer use at home

Abstract

There are many different guidelines on illumination level for work with VDTs. Most of the previous work put their focus on professional spaces with high desktop illuminance. For low illuminance environment, it is not fully studied on VDTs. For example, many home lighting conditions have illuminance below 100lux, comparing with 500lux in office. The adaptation condition for visual comfort may yield different preference. It is in general understood that offering a certain amount of background light could be a solution to help relieve eye fatigue. However home background may become very different from the background defined in previous experiments with the assumption of a wall close to the display. It is not clear by having a wall in distance from the display, whether or not same level of visual comfort as having a wall close by can still be realized with back lighting. In this study we investigated the background influence on visual comfort levels by comparing illuminated VDT background `with wall' and `without wall' at home, using no back lighting as the control condition. The results suggest that even with a wall in distance, back lighting can still be effective to improve visual comfort and relieve eye fatigue for computer use at home.