I Wore Blue Light Glasses For A Month To See If They Actually Work

blue light glasses

Blue light glasses have been trending for a while now. Marketed as special specs to wear in front of the computer, you can have perf 20/20 vision and still, apparently, reap the benefits.

You can buy blue light glasses, or you can get the blue light lens incorporated with your optical lenses. The idea is to wear them whenever you’re in front of a screen – think your phone, TV, and of course the big one – computer screens.

The way they work is this – blue light is said to cause eye strain and is known to impact our sleeping pattern. That’s why everyone says you should stay off your phone before bed, etc etc.

As someone who works in front of a computer all day, every day and is on her phone most of the time outside of that, I figured I’m a good guinea pig for testing blue light glasses.

Oscar Wylee sent me a pair of theirs to trial.

Kiko Acetate, $169

I don’t wear glasses, and rarely do sunglasses either – I always get uncomfortable with them on my nose for too long. So I was surprised to find wearing these for a full day didn’t bother me too much. I kind of just left them on as I did other stuff, like go to the kitchen for lunch and so on.

That did seem weird – wearing “fake” glasses around the house and not purely for their intended purpose, but I guess that was just in my head. They’re still real glasses, I just wore them occasionally when not necessary to save removing them, then forgetting where I left them (a constant battle).

At first, I wasn’t sure if the fact my eyes didn’t feel so grainy and strained at the end of the day could just be put down to placebo effect. I’m so prone to that – honestly, market anything to me and I’ll prob believe you.

But as the month went on, I genuinely felt like the blue light glasses were making a difference. It was especially apparent on darker, overcast days – the room I’m currently working from gets quite a bit of sunlight, and my non-medical opinion is that when the room is brighter, the intensity of the computer’s blue light is diminished. Kinda like how the TV is way brighter/more alarming in the dark.

I often end the day with a headache, and these seemed less apparent as well – although not completely gone, some days I’d still have one when work was particularly stressful.

One issue I had was remembering to use them. It’s so easy to sit down and just get stuck into work, and because blue light glasses aren’t needed by me personally to function, unlike say optical glasses, it was easy to end up completely forgetting about them until the point where my eyes felt strained, when I was like “oh that’s right, those blue light glasses RIGHT THERE.”

But they’ve become a mainstay on my WFH desk. I now pull them out when my eyes already feel tired, which is probably the worst way to use them. But it goes to show they’ve actually made an impact on me.

I would say if you didn’t work on a computer, they’re probably not worth the investment. Although not super exxy – Oscar Wylee will add them to your glasses for an extra $80 – it can ramp up your glasses price point by a fair bit if money is an issue right now.

But for working with a computer screen all day, especially if you deal with end-of-day headaches and gritty-feeling, strained eyes, I reckon they’re worth the investment.


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