Why does every small appliance or useful home electronics item have the BRIGHTEST LEDs in them?
I bought a new fan for our bedroom Sunday. It has 4 speed settings, and LEDs to display which setting you’re on.
Just like every other electrical device in our bedroom, I had to cover the LEDs with electrical tape because they are TOO DAMM BRIGHT. That one light was more than bright enough for me to see in the room with all the lights off.
I can’t sleep well if there’s a lot of light like that, especially blue light, and it’s like every fucking electronics manufacturer used the same extra bright blue LEDs.
All of our power strips have them. Same brightness.
The fans have them.
Don’t even get me started on digital clocks and the plague of bright LEDs that they bring about
Many charging plugs have them built into the plug itself.
Even some fucking light switches have them now!
I have about 6 different things in our bedroom that have electrical tape over their completely unnecessary LEDs.
Why has this become such a common thing? Is this really something most people want? To have a room that is never actually dark even with the lights turned off?
I’m pretty sure all this “blue light screws up your brain for sleep” is complete hornswaggle nonsense.
I CAN understand why bright light of any color temperature could muck up getting to sleep but I think that’s about it.
On taping over bright LEDs that don’t need to be there though, that I’m with you on.
When people say “screws up your sleep” they are talking about getting to sleep. Not that having blue light while you are sleeping impacts that sleep.
Your linked article agrees with that. What it disagrees with is the idea that blue light damages your eyes, which isn’t relevant there.
The link you posted supports the usual claim:
Blue light does affect the body’s circadian rhythm, our natural wake and sleep cycle.
I’ve never heard the claim that blue light damages eyes, only that it affects sleep-related biomechanisms.
The link you posted literally says that blue light is bad for your sleep.
My maybe it is, but having an erearder that puts out a nice orangey light when I’m reading in the dark is way better than the damned clinic blue lights the Kindle Paperwhite originated with.
Though your link refutes your point. It specifically says it makes it harder to go to sleep. That’s the only part about sleeping we even really care about
The article you linked has nothing to do with the issue at hand. That specifically talks about whether blue light is causing damage to your eyes, which there isn’t any evidence of and which I wasn’t claiming at all in my OP.
But there is clear evidence that blue light exposure impacts our circadian rhythm, and therefore how well we sleep. Blue light can also help us, when exposed to us at the right times. There are dozens of studies about this, it’s quite easy to find them. Anecdotally, I notice a BIG difference in how well I sleep in a room which is as dark as I can make it and in a room with even one single blue LED in it. I sleep better the darker the room. That lines up with what the science has shown.
