Setting Up Your Desk for Dry Eyes

Key overview

  • Lower the monitor. A screen below eye level means you look down, the lids sit lower, and less eye surface is exposed.
  • Screen height is the single highest-value change and it is free.
  • Aim for roughly an arm's length viewing distance, and position the screen away from direct airflow.
  • Vents, fans and car heaters pointed at the face dramatically increase tear evaporation.

How your desk is arranged changes how much of your eye surface is exposed to the air and how fast the tear film on it evaporates. These are unglamorous adjustments and several of them are free.

Monitor height, which matters most

The area of eye exposed to the air is determined by how wide your lids are open, and that is determined largely by where you are looking. Looking upward opens the lids. Looking downward lets them settle lower, covering more of the surface.

A monitor placed high — very common with laptop stands, and near-universal with monitors sat on top of a desktop tower — holds your gaze up and your lids wide for hours at a time. Dropping the screen so that the top of the display sits at or slightly below eye level means you look slightly down at the centre of it, which narrows the exposed area.

This is the highest-value change on this page. It costs nothing, and the effect on evaporation is meaningful rather than marginal.

Distance

Roughly an arm's length from the screen, around 50 to 70 centimetres, is the usual recommendation. Closer working tends to come with more intense concentration and a further drop in blink rate. It also increases the accommodative demand that produces focusing fatigue.

If you find yourself leaning in, that is usually a sign the text is too small or your correction is not right for the working distance, and it is worth fixing the cause rather than the posture.

Air movement

Moving air strips the tear film faster than still air, and most people have a vent, fan, heat pump or car heater pointed somewhere near their face without ever having thought about it. Look for the sources around your seat: overhead vents, desk fans, the dashboard vents in the car you commute in, and the back of a colleague's monitor fan.

Redirecting them, or moving the desk out of the stream, is usually straightforward and produces a noticeable difference for people who are sensitive to it.

Humidity

Low humidity increases evaporation directly. Air-conditioned and heated offices commonly run well below comfortable humidity levels, and this is covered in more detail separately. A desk humidifier helps within its immediate area, though the effect is local — it will not change a whole open-plan floor.

Lighting and glare

Glare does not dry the eye itself, but squinting and straining against it makes every other symptom worse and contributes to the fatigue. Position the screen perpendicular to windows rather than facing or backing onto them, use blinds against direct sun, and match screen brightness roughly to the ambient light in the room rather than running it at maximum.

A realistic order to do this in

Lower the monitor first. Find and redirect the airflow second. Adjust distance and lighting third. Everything else is refinement, and if symptoms persist once the physical setup is sensible, the problem is more likely in the tear film itself than in the room.

Related

Part of our guide to Screens & Digital Eye Strain.