I realized bad lighting is quietly hurting productivity (and no one measures it)

We spend a lot of time optimizing tools: keyboards, monitors, IDEs, latency, ergonomics.

But recently I noticed something odd — lighting almost never gets the same level of attention, even though it directly affects focus, fatigue, and decision-making.

I ran a small personal experiment while working long hours:

Removed the main overhead light

Used fewer, lower-intensity, indirect light sources

Let some areas stay intentionally dark

The result wasn’t just “more comfortable” — my working behavior changed:

Less eye fatigue late at night

Longer uninterrupted focus blocks

Fewer impulsive context switches

What surprised me is that most productivity advice assumes “more visibility = better”, while human perception seems to work the opposite way: contrast, shadow, and restraint improve clarity.

It made me wonder:

Why don’t we treat lighting like we treat typography or UI hierarchy?

Why are there almost no tools that measure lighting quality for work, beyond raw lux?

Is lighting an invisible variable in productivity that startups are ignoring?

Curious if others here have noticed similar effects — or if this is just a placebo I’m falling for.

6 points

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emmasuntech

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a day ago

5 comments

dyingkneepad ・ 12 hours ago

I'm quite the opposite: the more light, the better I am (especially now in the northern hemisphere December!). After painting my office walls with a reflective white and putting additional lamps on it, my productivity increased significantly (because the depression I felt inside the office went mostly away!).

In fact, my whole house has this problem: lots of rooms don't have light at the ceiling so I have to keep using these floor lamps that never seem to solve the problem for real, but if I want to add lamps at the ceilings I'll have to break drywalls and repaint everything, so I'm on an never-ending quest to improve lighting at my home.

JohnFen ・ 15 hours ago

I've noticed that what consists of ideal lighting for dev work varies quite a lot. Your lighting setup, for example, is terrible for me and reduces my productivity. I need light. Lots of light, preferably coming from somewhere out of my line of sight. Bright overhead lighting is excellent for me.

horvat ・ 20 hours ago

One of my hobbies is photography and only when I learned the lighting in purpose of making images nicer, I've noticed how poor the average lighting is around us, not just in offices, but in many spaces in general, like apartments, hotels, shops, etc. I've seen really quality light only in luxury hotels. And by quality light I don't mean luminance or even CR. I mean careful positioning, with shape and directionality of the light in mind. But I wasn't aware of it's effects on productivity and focus. Could there be an interesting connection between aesthetics point of view and productivity benefit? Meaning, could it be "measured" in that way?

prashantsengar ・ 16 hours ago

This is surprising. I generally notice that I have more eye fatigue when working in a dark room compared to when I keep the room bright.

2rsf ・ 19 hours ago

> Is lighting an invisible variable in productivity that startups are ignoring?

There are two questions here- lighting is a known factor influencing productivity, you can easily google that.

Are startups ignoring it? I don't have any data showing that, but I wouldn't be surprised