Home office: Protecting your eye health

As many of us have been working from home for several months now, our research team wanted to understand just how this lifestyle change is affecting us.

By reaching out to 2,000 adults across the UK, we got a better idea of people's home office setups and the ways in which their mental, physical, and most specifically eye health, is being impacted.

Our study showed that in fact, remote working is taking its toll for some, given that 42% of the interviewees reported back as feeling stressed and 33% said they've been struggling mentally. Plus, 43% revealed that they're experiencing tired eyes and headaches, with many agreeing that the cause is poor lighting in their workspaces.

With these findings in mind, our experienced, in-house optometrist, Yannick Roth has created a list of super-simple tips for keeping your peepers protected, so you can stay productive:

• Drink more water
• Move your desk to be near a window
• Set alarms to take screen breaks: follow the 20-20-20 rule - every 20 minutes look away from the screen for 20 seconds, at something that's 20 feet away
• Set a curfew to stop looking at screens in the evening
• Invest in ‘blue-light blocking' glasses, and use blue light filter settings on the computer and/or phone
• Use artificial eye drops
• Have a good desk lamp for when it's dark/the lighting isn't great
• Control the temperature of the heating/air conditioning, as it makes your eyes dry
• Switch to your specs once a week to give your eyes a rest (when wearing contact lenses)
• Do some simple eye exercises
• Use moisturising eye cream around your eyes at night
• Keep your eyes 65-70cm from your laptop screen, and 30-60cm from your phone

We've also expanded on this advice in a fun infographic, making it even easier to enjoy a more comfortable and healthier home office environment - starting now! Download the infographic