Dry eyes for remote workers

Remote workers often get dry eyes because the home office removes the natural breaks of an office day. There’s no walk to a meeting room, video calls stack back to back, and the laptop sits close with the heat or air conditioning running. Build breaks into the calendar, raise and push back the screen, keep vents off your face, and consider a humidifier in heating season.

Why working from home is hard on eyes

In an office, a workday is broken up by things that make you look away: a coworker stopping by, walking to the printer, lunch somewhere else. At home those disappear. Many remote workers sit at the same screen from first email to last call. People blink less while concentrating on a screen, and the blinks they do make are often partial, leaving part of the eye’s surface uncovered. Over a long day, that adds up.

Screens and your tear film explains how the tear film’s oil, water and mucus layers work together, and why reduced blinking lets water evaporate faster.

Video calls and the camera stare

Video meetings ask for a particular kind of attention. You watch faces closely, you’re aware of being watched, and many people stare at the camera to seem engaged. All of that tends to cut blinking further. A few things help:

• Turn off self-view once you’ve checked your framing. Watching yourself is one more thing to stare at.
• On audio-only calls, look away from the screen entirely. Walk around if you can.
• Leave five minutes between meetings when you control the calendar. Many calendar apps can shorten meetings automatically.
• Blink fully and slowly a few times when you unmute to speak, a built-in reminder.

The laptop problem

A laptop on a kitchen table puts the screen low and close. You tend to look down at it, which is generally easier on eyes than looking up, but you also lean in and hold your focus at a short distance for hours. A desk setup with an external monitor gives you more control:

• Put the monitor about an arm’s length away, with the top of the screen at or slightly below eye level.
• Raise the text size so you’re not leaning toward the screen to read.
• Turn brightness down to roughly match the room. A glowing screen in a dark room is harder to look at for long.
• Put the screen at a right angle to windows to cut glare.

Home office heating and cooling

Remote workers get to control the thermostat, which is a mixed blessing. Forced-air heat warms air without adding water, so relative humidity indoors drops through the winter. A space heater under the desk or a register blowing toward your chair moves that dry air across your eyes. In summer, a ceiling fan or window air conditioner does the same.

Check where the air goes. Close or redirect a floor register that points at your chair, angle a space heater toward your legs and not your face, and keep a desk fan below eye level. A small humidifier near the desk can help during heating season; our guide on whether a humidifier helps dry eyes covers settings and cleaning.

Building breaks into a remote day

Without coworkers to interrupt you, breaks have to be scheduled. Some ways remote workers make them stick:

• Use a timer that goes off every twenty minutes. When it does, look at something across the room or out a window for about twenty seconds.
• Make one call a day a walking call.
• Take lunch away from the desk, even if it’s just the other side of the kitchen.
• Refill a water glass instead of keeping a big bottle at the desk. Getting up is the point.
• End the day by closing the laptop, so evening scrolling doesn’t happen at the same screen.

Using a lubricating drop at your desk

If your eyes feel dry or irritated during the workday, an over-the-counter lubricating drop is an option. Quell’s Uses line reads: For use as a protectant against further irritation or to relieve dryness of the eye. It’s designed to reinforce the tear film’s oil layer to help reduce moisture loss. Follow the directions on the label: Apply 1 drop 3 times per day in each eye. Wash your hands first, since keyboards and phones aren’t clean, and keep the tip away from everything: Do not touch tip of bottle to any surface to avoid contamination.

Read the caution before your first use: Caution should be used in those with egg or bird allergies — For use in the eyes only. Keep the bottle in a drawer or on a shelf, not on a sunny windowsill or beside a space heater. The storage line reads: Store between 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F). The full panel is on our Drug Facts page.

Getting drops delivered to your home office

Working from home makes deliveries easy. Quell ships from Brentwood, Tennessee, to US addresses. Shipping is $10.00, and orders of 3 or more bottles ship free. There’s no subscription; you’ll get one reminder email when you might be running low, and you can reorder whenever you like from the home page.

When to call an eye doctor

Dry, tired eyes after a long screen day are common. Pain, vision changes or irritation that doesn’t settle are different. The label’s stop-use line reads: Stop use and ask a doctor if you feel eye pain or changes in your vision, if irritation or redness continues, or if the condition worsens or persists for 72 hours. If you wear contacts or use other eye drops, the label doesn’t cover those cases, so ask your eye doctor or pharmacist. A routine eye exam is also a good time to mention how many hours you spend at a screen.