How to adjust the maximum white (NOT overall brightness) on an LCD computer monitor (display/screen)?

Question

My eyes are hurting from computer use.

I use dark colors when possible, but some applications only use bright white backgrounds. They are resulting in physical pain in my eyes.

I have turned my monitor's brightness down to zero, but pure white (#FFF) is still too bright.

I would like to reduce the maximum brightness without lowering the overall brightness any further.

In other words, I would like to display the area "X'd" out in the image below as a light gray without affecting everything else too much:

What I've tried:

1. Reducing overall brightness. This makes all the less-bright colors too dim and only reduces the brightest white a little bit.
2. Adjusting contrast. This doesn't reduce the brightest whites.
3. Adjusting gamma. This doesn't make the brightest whites less bright.

The monitor is currently connected to a Windows laptop via HDMI.

I'm interested in all solutions.

Answer 1

I know this question is from a year ago but what helped me was the NVIDIA control panel, just play around with the brightness and contrast settings, I keep the brightness low (15-30max and then just make the contrast brighter. I would recommend testing this on a good template or something.

Answer 2

AFAIK Windows itself does not provide any (sane) possibilty to change colors for default elements' colors or color curve correction (only global gamma ramps).

Global color correction with custom gamma curves can be applied by using 3d party software with LUT curve editing capabilities. But obviously reduction of white will result in image quality loss. E.g. you will not be able to see UI elements border highlights etc. so they will appear 'flat'.

I think it is against SE rules to place links to 3d party software, and most of them are paid software. So you can try to search online for "windows monitor calibration custom LUT utility".

Answer 3

The only solution I've found to the discomfort of viewing very bright whites is to adjust the temperature and brightness of the monitor.

On Windows

If you have a Dell monitor, the Dell Display Manager provides some quick color profiles that can help lessen the glare of bright whites:

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=M33CG

On Linux

I use a xrandr to quickly knock down or raise brightness on all my monitors with a ruby script monitor_dim.rb

Answer 4

1 Kelvin Colour Temperature Setting; 2 RGB; 3 Sharpness; 4 Brightness and Contrast.

I have a newish desktop monitor. The white has, likewise, been irritating me [explains why I am here].

I tried adjusting the, above five, settings [available to my monitor]. I find that raising the KCTS, from 6500K to 9300K, gave me a decent drop in eye fatigue. I adjusted the other settings to preference. RGB [13,13,13] and Sharpness [50%] give me palatable change. Brightness and Contrast do not do much [again: on my monitor].

I am not happy with the 60ish% white-yellowish, guesstimated, result but it's what I can do. The intense white glare is toned down but, still, glaringly obvious: sigh... Maybe default settings with sunglasses will work.

Answer 5

Unfortunately, only solution I found was to switch back to good old TN monitor. Reducing brightness, contrast and gamma on a new one does not work well as it's decreases quality of a picture. Especially for gaming. You can set it to be dim enough to not hurt your eyes, but then you can't see anything in a dark parts of picture. Which is suboptimal.

Answer 6

If you are using a monitor that supports HDR in Windows 11, you can try this setting:

Settings > System > Display > HDR

(or simply search for "HDR Settings" in the start menu)