The optimal home office to protect your eyes

For millions since lockdown, home working has become part of their nine-to-five routine. In turn, this has underlined the importance of having a proper workstation and optimal vision correction, particularly if home working is here to stay…

If you spend hours staring at small on-screen fonts, you may need glasses suitable for comfortable all-day use. Bespoke office spectacles can include VDU-specific varifocals and enhanced reading glasses. We’ll prescribe lenses that help your eyes quickly refocus between monitor, keyboard and paperwork. We can also help you choose frames which fully cover your eyes, providing equally clear central and peripheral vision. Anti-reflective coatings reduce screen glare, while effectively eliminating reflections from light sources.

Alongside well-fitting glasses, good lighting helps to minimise eyestrain and headaches. Augment natural daylight with full-spectrum lamps, whose crisp white light is better for reading and writing than incandescent bulbs and their less effective yellowish light. A bright computer monitor in gloomy surroundings makes it hard to focus on anything other than the screen, leading to sore eyes and premature tiredness. We stock bottles of eye drops, which are great for keeping eyes hydrated and comfortable, though regular breaks away from the monitor are important, too.

A standalone monitor is preferable to an integrated laptop chassis that involves craning your neck downwards, increasing the risk of headaches and neck strain. If you need to use a laptop, buy a docking station and connect peripherals like a mouse and monitor, which turn on as the laptop docks. Buy a padded office chair with lumbar support, positioning the centre of the monitor at eye level, with a keyboard slightly below your elbows as they rest on the chair arms.

Practicality is vital for a good home workstation. If you can’t shut yourself in a quiet room, buy noise-cancelling headphones. Choose a desk with space for a printer and scanner, and drawers to store cables and paperwork. Connecting your PC or Mac to your broadband router with an Ethernet cable or Powerline adaptor provides a faster and more stable connection than WiFi, while also increasing security.