In today’s digital world, we spend long hours staring at computer monitors, laptops, and mobile screens, often more than eight hours a day. This constant screen exposure has led to Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), also known as digital eye strain, a growing concern among both professionals and everyday users.

Common symptoms include eye fatigue, headaches, blurred vision, dry eyes, and neck or shoulder pain. According to ophthalmologists and the American Optometric Association (AOA), these symptoms often result from a combination of factors such as poor lighting, glare on digital screens, improper viewing distances, and uncorrected vision problems.

Unlike reading printed pages, viewing digital screens involves different distances, angles, and brightness patterns, all of which place additional demand on the visual system. The human eye must constantly refocus and adapt to varying light levels, which over time, causes muscle tension and fatigue.

Among these visual stressors, glare is one of the most underestimated. It doesn’t only come from overly bright light. It can also occur when the brightness balance in your environment is disrupted. When your eyes are forced to constantly adjust between light and dark areas, the surrounding muscles stay tense, accelerating fatigue and intensifying CVS symptoms.

Understanding how glare works and how proper lighting design, such as ASYM-Light™ and Bias Lighting, can restore visual balance is key to achieving lasting eye comfort in any screen-based workspace.

Before understanding how to reduce eye discomfort, it’s important to know why it happens in the first place, and that often comes down to glare. But glare isn’t a single phenomenon. In fact, there are three distinct types of glare, each caused by different lighting conditions and optical mechanisms. Recognizing these differences is the first step to solving them effectively.

Glare refers to visual discomfort or reduced visibility caused by excessive or uncontrolled light. It occurs when light enters your eyes directly, reflects off surfaces, or creates large brightness differences within your field of view. In everyday workspaces, glare can be categorized into three main types that affect your visual comfort in different ways. 

Light that shines directly into your eyes, or from bright sources just outside your main line of sight. Examples include overhead lighting, side windows, or exposed bulbs that are not aimed at your desk but still appear in your field of vision. These sources make it difficult for your eyes to stay relaxed and focused.

Light that bounces off glossy surfaces such as monitors, desks, or printed materials. This reflection reduces contrast and blurs details, forcing you to squint or adjust posture to avoid it. 

The most subtle yet common form of glare occurs when the brightness of your screen is much higher than the surrounding environment. In a dark room, your pupils must constantly adjust between the bright display and dim background, leading to tension, headaches, and visual fatigue.

According to All About Vision, when your pupils dilate in low light, your vision becomes less sharp, similar to how a wider camera aperture reduces focus depth. This makes it harder to see screen details clearly in dark environments, which is why contrast glare often leads to faster eye strain even when the lighting doesn’t feel harsh. (All About Vision, 2024)

Once you understand the different types of glare, the next step is learning how to counter them effectively. Each kind of glare stems from a specific lighting imbalance, so the solution must be equally precise.

Here’s how each type of glare can be solved: 

Both direct and reflected glare are caused by uncontrolled light direction, either when light enters your eyes directly or reflects off glossy surfaces such as monitors and desks.

The key to solving these problems is asymmetrical lighting, which guides light forward and downward at a controlled angle. This ensures that the light illuminates only the working surface while avoiding both the user’s eyes and the monitor.

By shaping the beam path carefully and allowing for slight adjustments in the light angle, asymmetrical lighting maintains a comfortable level of brightness without causing glare or reflections. It creates an even, focused light zone that supports visual clarity and sustained focus. 

Contrast glare happens when your screen is much brighter than the surrounding environment. In dark rooms, your pupils must constantly adjust between the two extremes of brightness and darkness, creating a tug-of-war that quickly leads to eye strain.

Bias lighting helps resolve this by reducing brightness contrast within your field of view. It introduces a soft, evenly distributed backlight behind the monitor, brightening the wall and balancing overall luminance.

Research from The Eye Foundation (India) also supports this principle, noting that adding ambient or background light helps the eyes maintain natural movement and focus, reducing visual strain and improving comfort during long screen use (The Eye Foundation, 2024).

With a more even light environment, your eyes no longer need to continuously adapt between bright and dark zones. This stabilizes visual perception, prevents fatigue, and keeps your focus steady over long working hours.

Building on the principles of Asymmetrical lighting and Bias lighting, the BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 brings both glare-reducing concepts together into one integrated design. It’s engineered to create a balanced lighting environment that minimizes eye strain, enhances focus, and restores comfort for long hours of screen use.

The ScreenBar’s front light, ASYM-Light™ Technology that directs light forward and downward at an 18° anti-glare angle. This precise beam path ensures the light covers the entire desk area evenly, without shining onto the screen (reflected glare) or into your eyes (direct glare).

To accommodate different sitting postures and monitor heights, ScreenBar Halo 2 head also features a 24° adjustable angle, allowing you to fine-tune the direction for optimal comfort, whether you’re leaning back, sitting upright, or working close to the display.

This thoughtful combination of optical precision and ergonomic flexibility eliminates both direct and reflected glare, keeping your workspace bright yet visually comfortable.

The latest ScreenBar Halo 2 extends this comfort to your surroundings through an upgraded rear light that acts as bias lighting. Its distinctive “U-shaped” optical design expands coverage by 423% compared with the previous generation (ScreenBar Halo), delivering wider, softer, and more uniform backlight distribution.

By brightening the wall behind your monitor, ScreenBar Halo 2 reduces excessive contrast between your screen and the dark background, preventing the pupil-adjustment fatigue that often leads to headaches and eye discomfort. The result is a consistent, evenly illuminated environment that supports focus and comfort for extended periods. 

Visual comfort is more than just a matter of brightness. It’s about balance.

When light is directed and distributed correctly, your eyes can focus effortlessly, your vision stays clear, and fatigue becomes a distant concern. That’s why solving glare isn’t only about adding more light. It’s about adding the right kind of light.

Through asymmetrical lighting and bias lighting, we can address all major forms of glare: direct, reflected, and contrast, and create an environment where both the screen and the surroundings work in harmony.

This balanced lighting allows your eyes to maintain a stable visual state, reducing unnecessary strain while keeping your focus sharp over long hours of work. 

The BenQ ScreenBar series embodies this philosophy, combining precision optics with ergonomic design to deliver lighting that adapts to you, not the other way around.

By transforming harsh contrasts into soft, even illumination, it helps you work, code, design, or read comfortably for as long as you need, without the visual fatigue that typically comes with long screen sessions.

In the end, achieving true eye comfort isn’t just about how bright your desk looks. It’s about how relaxed your eyes feel. With the right lighting balance, clarity and comfort finally coexist. 

Glare can be divided into direct glare, reflected glare, and contrast glare.

• Direct glare occurs when light enters your eyes directly or from bright sources within your field of vision. 

• Reflected glare happens when light bounces off glossy surfaces such as monitors or desks, creating distracting reflections.

• Contrast glare appears when your screen is much brighter than its surroundings, forcing your eyes to constantly adjust between light and dark. 

Both are caused by improper light direction, but their origins differ. Direct glare comes from exposed light sources, like overhead lamps or windows, that shine straight into your eyes or nearby. Reflected glare, on the other hand, is light that bounces off a surface before reaching your eyes, often reducing contrast and making screen content harder to see clearly. 

Both are caused by improper light direction, but their origins differ. Direct glare comes from exposed light sources, like overhead lamps or windows, that shine straight into your eyes or nearby. Reflected glare, on the other hand, is light that bounces off a surface before reaching your eyes, often reducing contrast and making screen content harder to see clearly. 

No. Different glare types require different strategies. Asymmetrical lighting effectively reduces direct and reflected glare caused by artificial light sources through precise light direction control. However, it cannot eliminate natural sunlight glare coming through windows.

In such cases, the best solution is to reposition your monitor away from the window or use curtains or blinds to block or diffuse the incoming light. Meanwhile, bias lighting helps counter contrast glare by balancing ambient brightness. Combining these methods provides the most effective and sustainable way to maintain long-term eye comfort. 

It may feel comfortable at first, but a dark environment creates a strong brightness contrast between your screen and the background. Your pupils constantly expand and contract to adapt to these changes, leading to fatigue, tension, and headaches, a condition known as contrast glare.