If you buy yourself a new laptop or monitor, chances are, it will take some time for your eyes to adjust to it. If you believe your monitor is too bright, and others notice the bright screen, then something may be wrong.
Luckily, most monitor brightness issues are easy to solve as these problems occur either due to wrong configurations, drivers, or other display settings. If you want to change your screen brightness, you have come to the right place!
Why is my screen so bright?
Sometimes, you might have a really bright screen when you exit an app. Maybe you accidentally hit some buttons on your keyboard that control the monitor brightness levels in other situations.
This isn’t the end of the world, as any problem has at least three solutions, or so they say! Here are some of the most common reasons why your monitor is too bright and what you can do to fix it!
1. Wrong resolution & brightness settings
For some people, changing resolution settings might give them the appearance of a brighter or darker monitor. Your eyes may be used to specific resolution settings that may have been changed without your knowledge.
Similarly, it’s entirely possible that someone changed your brightness levels to suit their vision while you were away from your PC. Fortunately, both problems are quickly resolved. Keep reading to find out how!
2. Display driver issue
You can adjust brightness levels on your levels by using its special keys, generally situated anywhere between the F1 to F12 keys. However, when a monitor is too bright, it might mean that you haven’t correctly installed its driver.
Similarly, some display driver issues may cause this brightness, such as outdated drivers.
3. Contrast settings aren’t suited to your eyes
If you just purchased your new monitor or laptop, and your computer screen is too bright, then the default contrast settings aren’t too good for your eyes.
If you aren’t working on a new monitor/laptop, then it’s possible that the contrast settings were somehow changed.
4. Blue light
To make the screen less bright, consider the fact that blue light may be responsible.
Various LCD products with LED backlights and a high color temperature display emit stronger blue light. Blue light causes eye fatigue faster, which might make you believe the monitor is too bright.
5. Display flickering
Similar to the blue light issue, LCDs with LED blacklights have a dimming system known as display flickering. This brightness adjustment mechanism might tire your eyes quickly, leading to the perception of a too-bright monitor screen.
6. You might need a specialized display
Due to the technological advancements of monitors and displays, it’s quite possible that you may have some undiscovered ophthalmological problems, which you might have discovered just now.
This might have to do with blue light, display flickering, and other display features of newer monitor models. You may need a specialized display to address eye fatigue.
7. Power & battery settings issues
When your laptop screen is too bright, the cause might be your power & battery settings. These settings affect the default brightness levels on your laptop, and if these settings were changed, it might make the screen less bright or too bright.
8. Compatibility issues
Certain apps, and especially videogames, might alter your brightness settings, and thus your monitor is too bright.
Older apps or games do this due to compatibility issues. In other cases, when you set your contrast or brightness levels in games, these changes might remain applied to your default monitor settings even after you exit the game.
9. The night light was on
The night light is a feature that automatically reduces blue light during nighttime. However, if you enjoyed your new monitor/laptop during nighttime, then the next day, you might be surprised at how bright the monitor is now.
This happens because you adjust your eyes to the night light.
10. Calibration issues
Output from your PC has to be the monitor’s native resolution, typically 1366 x 768, 70 Hz. If this isn’t calibrated, your monitor will attempt to scale the output itself. If one monitor is brighter than the other, then this is typically the cause.
11. Dynamic contrast on
Some monitors have a dynamic contrast feature that automatically enhances the image quality. If this feature is turned on, it might make you feel as if the monitor is too bright, or it might make the screen less bright.
If your monitor is switched to a pre-defined mode, such as “game,” “document,” etc., then it’s entirely possible that it may appear too bright for your eyes. These modes can be chosen at any time and can easily be activated.
How to turn down monitor brightness?
Whether your laptop screen is too bright or your computer screen is too bright, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered! Here is what you can do to adjust brightness levels on your PC/laptop or change screen brightness!
1. Change resolution & brightness settings
Everyone has their own brightness preferences on their PCs. Right-click on your desktop, and click on display settings. Here, try to adjust the right resolution and brightness levels suited to your needs.
If your monitor is still too bright, read on!
2. Update display driver
A faulty or outdated driver might render your brightness settings useless. In fact, you might adjust brightness however you want, yet no effect takes place, and this is usually due to the display driver.
To check if your display driver is up-to-date, press the Windows Key, type Device Manager, click on it, and search for your display driver. Right-click on the monitor icon, and click update. Reboot our PC, and see if you can change the brightness levels.
If you can’t make your screen less bright, you can try to uninstall your display driver and reboot your PC. Windows 10 will automatically install your display driver once it reboots. Be sure to check other available updates as they might also interfere with your PC functionality.
Press the Windows key and type Update. Click the Check for Updates icon and see if any are available.
3. Check high contrast settings
Colors too bright on a monitor, or general brightness, might also be associated with your high contrast settings. To fix this, go to Start>Settings>Ease of Access> here; you will have the Make Everything Brighter option.
Play with it to see if any changes are good. If not, move on to the high contrast settings tab on the left. Here you can both turn off or on contrast settings and adjust color brightness levels. Play with these settings until you get the desired result.
4. Reduce blue light
Blue light is invisible; however, it can give you the perception of a brighter monitor. You can reduce the blue light in your monitor to see if the issue persists. To do this, you can activate the night light option.
To do this, go to Start>Settings>System> and change on or off the night light cycle. You can also adjust it from here.
5. Minimize display flickering
Screen flickering might make your eyes tired really fast, and thus you might perceive the monitor/screen as too bright. To reduce screen flickering, set a different refresh rate.
Go to Start>Settings>System, scroll down, and click on Advanced Display Settings.
From here, you can adjust the refresh rate. You can also click on the Graphics settings tab and check if these settings contribute to your issue or not.
6. Power & battery settings
Laptops generally have more brightness adjusting mechanisms. For example, you can click on your battery icon and check to see its power mode. Maybe these settings were changed without your awareness.
From here, you can also go to the Battery Settings tab and personalize your options.
7. Restart PC/laptop
Some apps or games, especially old ones, might have some compatibility issues with your PC and result in them changing your brightness levels. A really bright screen is an excellent indicator of that when you exit from the game or put it in the taskbar.
Close the application if it is present in the taskbar and see if your screen brightness returns to normal. If not, then you can also restart your PC/laptop and see if your screen is still too bright. Additionally, if this doesn’t help, you might uninstall this software.
Go to Start>Settings>Apps, find the apps that you recently installed, and uninstall them. Reboot your PC/laptop and see if your brightness levels return to normal.
8. Calibrate monitor
If you bought a new monitor, you might need to calibrate it by ensuring that your PC’s output power is at the monitor’s native resolution. You can also auto-tune your monitor. Check for a button labeled as Auto, Auto Setup, or something similar.
You can also find it in the menu system. This will calibrate and synchronize your new monitor with the VGA output from your computer. If one monitor is brighter than the other, this might solve it.
9. Turn dynamic contrast off
The dynamic contrast option might make your monitor too bright. To change this, you need to turn it off as this feature automatically adjusts brightness levels and contrast as it pleases. To turn it off, go to Start>Settings>Display and turn off the option “Change brightness automatically when lighting changes.”
You can also thick off the option “Automatically adjust contrast based on the displayed content to help improve battery.”
Some monitors have pre-defined modes, such as for gaming, movies, documents, photos, and so on, and the dynamic contrast is responsible for a very bright screen.
A predefined mode might make your screen too bright in certain situations, but by turning it off, the problem might go away.
10. Use a specialized display
Our last tip is to go to an ophthalmologist to check if everything is okay with your eyes. In certain medical conditions, users might opt to use specialized displays that won’t cause eye fatigue as regular monitors do.
An undiscovered medical condition might make you perceive a computer screen too bright, and the best way to deal with it is to go to your ophthalmologist, perform a test, and inquire about the best monitors that you can use for your condition.
We hope our article about how to change screen brightness has helped you! Stay tuned for more!
