What kind of light environment do you prefer to work in?

Question

What type of light do you prefer to be working in? How do you have your light source(s) situated? Wattage? Any particular lamp recommendations?

Is there any sort of lighting environment that you hate?

Answer 1

I use the ceiling light from my room, but I also have a small desk lamp which I occasionally turn on. I dislike it sometimes because it creates annoying shadows if I'm trying to write something down.

Answer 2

I use my office flourescents at half strength. I'd prefer natural light from an overcast day, but that's difficult to arrange. Needs to be bright enough (but not too bright) to minimize the brightness difference between my monitors and the "real world."

Answer 3

I've had a Dazor Model 1000 Table Lamp on my desk for the past 30+ years. (The editor may break that link -- it's to a similar one that's one ebay right now)

Answer 4

Open blinds all the way - daylight. Otherwise, at night or rainy days I like those "daylight" lamps. The "OTT" lamp as one brand is called but there are many, many "sunlight/daylight" lamps provide a nice white light. For ME, its perfect.

Answer 5

At my last job the florescence tubes in the ceiling would give me headaches. I finally got everyone talked into turning them off in our section. I bought a small table lamp and put a 60 watt equivalent CFL bulb in. The indirect light really helped. I had enough light to read printed documents, books, and see my keyboard. But I didn't have the glaring megawatts of florescent light shining down on my monitor, etc.

At my current job we have enough natural light that the florescent bulbs in the ceiling really don't hurt my eyes.

I think this is an overlooked topic in the workplace. I have a friend that also gets headaches from the florescent lights at his job.

Answer 6

I work from home where I can, and have a massive north-facing window that lets in natural light all day... and for at night I have a 5000 Kelvin fluro pumping out the eq of 180w... it is so damn bright that it is LIKE daylight! Perfect for late-night pc hardware tinkering too!

Answer 7

I like the tall indirect lamps on dimmers. Office florescent lights give me headaches, and I refuse to work with them. We unscrew all of them in our development area and roll with indirect light and/or natural light from the windows.

Answer 8

I leave the overhead florescent lights off and use a soft 60W bulb in a floor lamp positioned so that it doesn't cause glare on my monitor.

Answer 9

This is an interesting topic, I don't think I ever really thought of how important lighting can be. :) Currently I just use the florescents in my office, but I suffer migrains on a pretty regular basis and have tried everything but changing my lighting. I may have to try that.

Answer 10

At one place i did a lot of image processing with color. It was important to have an accurate impression of color. The standard ceiling flourescent lighting sucked way terrible. I couldn't tell what was truly white. We bought a couple lamps allegedly color balanced for some particular color temperature 6000K or whatever, and allegedly used by people working in film post-production and yada yada. When they arrived (after a few months!) the light they cast on the wall had obvious (to artists) color blotches - a little reddish here, greenish there, magenta and yellow along the edges there. They were fine otherwise, but for critical tasks, please visit the hardware store or Target or someplace brick-and-mortar instead of shopping online!

Short answer to the actual question: incandescent for the full spectrum (look up metamerism), neutral gray walls (there's a formula for the paint i found somewhere) and an easy but not too big or closeby view of the sky so i can glance at white puffy cumulus clouds.

Answer 11

Lots of light. Preferrably sunlight and incandescent instead of flourescent, if possible.

Answer 12

I work during the night, in total darkness. After a few energy drinks sleeping is no longer an option, the only thing you can do is code, no distractions.

Answer 13

When i'm at home, I prefer working n total darkness in the wee hours of the night. No phone calls, nobody knocking on my door, no ambient noise. other than that when am in the office i use natural light as i have a huge window that supplies enough night into my office.

Answer 14

i want to work with my computer