How far should your monitor be? A desk setup guide for screen workers

People spend money on lenses before they spend five minutes moving their monitor. Both help. Only one is free.

If your eyes feel gritty and heavy by 4pm, work through this list first. Then come see us about the lenses.

1. Distance: about an arm's length

Sit back in your chair, reach out, and your fingertips should roughly touch the screen. That is around 50 to 70cm for a normal monitor. If you are on a 27-inch or larger screen, push it further back rather than closer.

Closer is not clearer. Closer means your focusing muscles hold a harder position for eight hours.

2. Height: look slightly down, not up

The top edge of the screen should sit at or just below eye level, so your gaze falls slightly downward onto the middle of the display.

There is a real reason for this beyond neck comfort. Looking downward means your upper lid covers more of the eye surface, so less of it is exposed to the air. Looking upward at a high monitor does the opposite and dries your eyes faster.

3. Tilt the screen back a little

Around 10 to 20 degrees, so the screen face is roughly square to your line of sight. A screen tilted forward bounces the ceiling lights straight into your eyes.

4. Fix the laptop problem

A laptop cannot be at the right height and the right typing position at the same time. The screen is too low and too close, which is why an afternoon of laptop work feels worse than an afternoon on a desktop.

A riser and a separate keyboard solve it for the price of a lunch. If you work from home in the Philippines and your laptop sits flat on the dining table, this is the single biggest change on this list.

5. Put windows to the side

Never with a window directly behind the screen, and never directly behind you. Behind the screen and you are staring into a bright background all day. Behind you and the glass throws a reflection onto the display.

Screen perpendicular to the window is the setup you want.

6. Match your brightness to the room

A screen that glows like a torch in a dim room is tiring. So is a dim screen in a bright room. Hold a sheet of white paper next to the display: if the screen looks much brighter or much duller than the paper, adjust it.

7. Make the text bigger instead of leaning in

Leaning toward the screen is your body telling you the text is too small. Increase the font size or the display scaling. Nobody gives you a prize for reading 11-point type at arm's length.

8. Aim the aircon away from your face

This one is specific to how we work here. A vent blowing across your face all day strips the tear film faster than anything else on this list, and it is why so many Philippine office workers describe their eyes as sandy rather than blurry. Redirect the vent, or move the desk.

9. Blink, and use 20-20-20

Blink rate drops sharply during focused screen work. Every 20 minutes, look at something about 6 metres away for 20 seconds, and blink fully a few times while you do it. Set a repeating timer for a week until it becomes habit.

Two monitors, one rule

If one screen carries most of your work, put that one straight ahead and angle the second beside it. If you use both equally, split the difference and centre yourself on the gap between them. What you must not do is twist your neck to the same side for eight hours a day.

When the setup is right and your eyes still hurt

That is the point where it is worth checking the prescription. Small uncorrected grades, a first astigmatism, and early presbyopia all show up as screen fatigue long before they show up as blurred distance vision.

Book a Vision7 eye test at your nearest Vision Express store. The seven-step exam measures your refraction properly and includes a binocular check, which is the part that matters for desk work: how your two eyes hold focus together at monitor distance for hours at a time.

For long screen days, ask for Opulens Blue Light 1.56 at the counter — a clear everyday lens built for people whose work is mostly a monitor, with an anti-reflective finish that cuts the ceiling-light glare bouncing off the lens surface. If you need the pair today, Opulens Advanced 1.60 is in stock and ready in 20 minutes.

If you are past 40 and your desk is where progressives give you trouble, Shamir Autograph Intelligence gives you a wider intermediate zone, so your monitor sits in a usable part of the lens instead of forcing your chin up all afternoon.

A word on blue light: these lenses are sold for viewing comfort, not to prevent eye disease. Most screen fatigue comes from reduced blinking and sustained focus, which is why the nine fixes above come first.

Every pair comes with free lifetime ultrasonic cleaning, free lifetime custom fitting and adjustment, and a 1-year warranty.