Whether you're gaming, working, or watching videos on your PC, brightness feels closely tied to the image quality. The brighter your panel can get, the more capable it probably is of delivering a satisfying experience. However, increasing your monitor's brightness indiscriminately can have the opposite effect. You might be ruining your display's image quality by cranking everything up to 11. High brightness alone can't compensate for any panel imperfections you might have. Besides, the less obvious but more severe downside of a monitor that's too bright is low-quality sleep. By straining your eyes more than you need to and disturbing your circadian rhythm, you're negatively impacting your sleep. This is why it's important to find the right brightness level for your room instead of keeping it high all the time.

We've been accustomed to high brightness

Blame your phone and TV

Your monitor isn't the only screen you use in a day. If you're working from home, your smartphone and TV are probably your most used devices after your PC. The difference between a smartphone display and a monitor is that the former can automatically adjust the brightness based on the surroundings, meaning you spend only a fraction of the time at high or full brightness. Your TV probably runs close to its maximum brightness a lot more of the time than your phone, but it's a 50-inch screen that's at least 8–10 ft from your eyes. The high brightness levels on a TV are much less stressful on your eyes than the same on a monitor that's around 3 ft from your eyes.

After getting used to high 60–80% brightness levels on smartphones and TVs, lowering the brightness on your monitor feels wrong. You consider lower brightness as too dim or unimpressive, so you crank it up. In an effort to make the image "pop," you choose the presets with the highest brightness or create a custom color profile that "feels" as bright as your TV or smartphone. This inefficient transition from tiny and massive screens to your monitor, which falls somewhere in between, leads to brightness levels that are just not efficient for image quality and your sleep quality. The solution is to choose a brightness level based on the content on your monitor, keeping your display only as bright as needed.

High brightness doesn't always equal great image quality

Most monitors look better with balanced settings

It's important to remember the type of monitors most people are using today. OLED monitors are still not affordable, and hence, far from commonplace. The majority of PC users are using IPS or VA displays, where local dimming isn't exactly ideal. Due to this, increasing brightness beyond reasonable levels not only blows up the bright areas, but also makes blacks look like greys. This results in an objectively worse image, thanks to washed-out colors and crushed shadows. The highest brightness levels on most monitors will expose the panel's imperfections instead of making the image "pop." You won't magically get an HDR image by cranking up the brightness alone. If your panel's local dimming capabilities aren't up to snuff, gaming and movies will actually look better at lower brightness levels.

If you're working on your PC for around 6–8 hours a day, you might think that low brightness levels will make your screen look too dim. However, your eyes can adjust faster than you think, and once they do, raising the brightness will seem wrong. When I'm writing articles, I use only around 10–14% brightness combined with a warm color tone. I can control the ambient sunlight in my room, so I don't need to keep the screen too bright when I'm writing. During gaming, I choose from two modes that have 40% and 80% brightness, respectively. It all depends on the type of game I'm playing. Since mine is an OLED display, the higher brightness levels come in handy when I need a solid HDR experience. For more casual games, I use the 40% brightness mode, since those don't benefit from higher brightness anyway.

Sustained high brightness can negatively affect your sleep

Don't take your sleep lightly

The image quality is just one aspect linked to your display's brightness levels. The more severe impact, potentially, is on your sleep, since your monitor's brightness directly affects your circadian rhythm. If you're used to working on your PC well into the night, higher brightness can make it much harder for you to transition to a "rest" mode needed for a peaceful sleep. Your body's internal clock is disrupted if you frequently work late, staring at a screen that's too bright. High brightness, combined with blue light, suppresses the melatonin in your system, negatively impacting the quality of your sleep.

Then, there's the obvious harm to your eyes in the form of strain. If you've been suffering from watery, itchy, or exhausted eyes for a while, your monitor's brightness might be the culprit. Your display should only be so bright as to allow you to consume the content on-screen without any extra effort. If it's too dim or too bright, then you need to adjust the brightness. A good rule of thumb when working on your PC is that the white backgrounds should not feel like sources of light by themselves. Match your monitor's brightness level to the ambient light level in your room. Another thing you can try is a monitor light bar, which helps reduce the glare from the screen and the resultant strain on your eyes. You could also explore protective glasses to further reduce the impact your screen has on your eyes.

It's time to lower your monitor's brightness

There are only a handful of instances where you really need to use your monitor's full brightness. Work-from-home professionals can comfortably use their display at significantly lower brightness levels than most people assume. And even for media consumption and gaming, high brightness doesn't always benefit the image quality. Keeping your monitor's brightness cranked up can also strain your eyes and ruin your sleep quality.