Dry eyes in a dorm room in winter

Dorm rooms in winter are small, overheated and often run on radiators you can’t control, so the air gets very dry. Pair that with long screen sessions during finals and eyes feel gritty fast. Move your bed and desk away from the radiator, take screen breaks, check whether your housing rules allow a humidifier, and use a lubricating drop as labeled. Buyers must be 18 or older to order Quell.

Does a radiator dry out the air?

A radiator doesn’t remove water from the air, but it lowers the relative humidity by warming it. Cold winter air comes in through windows and hallways with little moisture, the radiator heats it, and the same amount of water now sits in warmer air that could hold much more. The result is air that feels dry on your skin, lips and eyes. Older steam radiators in campus buildings often run hot with no thermostat in the room, which makes it worse.

Why a small room makes it worse

A typical double gives two people, two laptops, a mini fridge and a radiator a few square feet each. Heat builds quickly in a small space, and there’s little air volume to buffer it. Many students crack a window to cool off, which lets in more cold, dry air for the radiator to heat. Your bed is often pushed right against the heater because that’s where it fits.

• If you can rearrange, move the head of your bed away from the radiator.
• Don’t sit with your face toward it while you study.
• Keep a fan, if you use one, pointed at your body, not across your eyes.
• Ask facilities if the radiator has a valve you’re allowed to adjust; some do.

Are humidifiers allowed in dorms?

It depends on your school. Housing rules list what appliances you can bring, and some restrict items that plug in or produce moisture or heat. Check your residence hall handbook or ask your resident advisor before you buy one. If a small humidifier is allowed, clean it as often as its manual says; one that isn’t cleaned can do more harm to the room than good.

If it isn’t allowed, there are still options. Drying laundry on a rack in the room adds some moisture for a while. A bowl of water on the windowsill does very little on its own, so don’t count on it.

Finals week screens and your eyes

When you concentrate on a laptop, you blink less often and less fully. Blinking is what spreads tears across the eye, so long study sessions leave the surface exposed to that dry dorm air for longer. Try a few habits during exam season:

• Every 20 minutes or so, look across the room or out the window for a little while and blink fully.
• Raise your laptop on a stack of books so you look slightly down, not up.
• Turn up the font size rather than leaning in.
• Study in a library or lounge for part of the day; a change of room can mean a change of air.
• Sleep, even if it’s short. Eyes kept open into the small hours tend to feel worse by morning.

Our guide on dry eyes during finals week goes deeper into exam-season habits.

What makes a room have dry air?

Three things, mostly: cold outdoor air with little water in it, heating that warms that air without adding moisture, and air movement that carries moisture away from surfaces, including your eyes. A dorm in January tends to have all three. A forced-air vent or a box fan adds the third even in a building without radiators.

Using eye drops in a dorm

Wash your hands in the hall bathroom first, then follow the label: Apply 1 drop 3 times per day in each eye. Protect the tip as the label says: Do not touch tip of bottle to any surface to avoid contamination. Keep your own bottle and don’t share it with a roommate, since a bottle tip that touches someone else’s eye is no longer clean.

Quell is designed to reinforce the tear film’s oil layer to help reduce moisture loss. Its Uses read: For use as a protectant against further irritation or to relieve dryness of the eye. Read the caution before ordering: Caution should be used in those with egg or bird allergies — For use in the eyes only. The label’s storage line reads: Store between 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F). Next to a hot radiator is outside that range, so keep the bottle in a desk drawer instead. The full panel is on our Drug Facts page.

Ordering as a student

You need to be 18 or older to buy Quell. Checkout works as a guest, so no account is needed, and there’s no subscription. Campus addresses can be tricky, so use the exact mailing format your housing office gives you. Shipping eye drops to a college dorm explains how to address it. Parents sending a bottle can also tuck one into a college care package.

If you’ll be heading home for winter break, order early enough that the package isn’t sitting in a closed mailroom. We send tracking by email but don’t promise a delivery date.

When to visit the campus health center

Dry dorm air explains a lot, but not everything. If your eyes hurt, your vision blurs and stays blurry, or one eye is much worse than the other, see the student health center or an eye doctor. The label puts it plainly: 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.