How to Improve Sleep by Decreasing Artificial Blue Light at Night

The timing, however, of when we receive natural blue light is important. Natural blue light from the Sun is high in the morning and increases and peaks around midday. It then naturally decreases throughout the rest of the day towards sunset, when blue light is at a minimum and yellow, orange, and red light are at their highest, which helps prepare us for sleep.

This natural design for sunlight exposes us to a large amount of blue light in the morning and midday, with a decreasing and negligible amount of blue light towards the end of the day and at night. This was the case for 99% of our evolutionary history. However, since the advent of the light bulb in the 1800s and modern electronic screens in the 1900s, this natural balance has been disrupted and we are now exposed to a large amount of artificial blue light after dark.

At night, in our homes, artificial blue light primarily comes from two sources: modern light bulbs and electronic device screens such as the screens on our smartphones, tablets, computer monitors, and TVs. Exposure to this artificial blue light at night can cause significant problems with sleep and circadian rhythms. Over time blue light suppresses melatonin production, which in turn interrupts healthy sleep patterns and delays the onset of sleep.

Chronic insomnia or poor sleep negatively affects every poor health outcome. It’s estimated that 10% of the world’s population has insomnia that is severe enough to be called a medical condition and 30–60% of the world’s population has some sort of milder short-term symptomatic manifestation of sleep disruption throughout the year. The argument can be made that healthy sleep is the most important of all foundational health pillars, which makes it more concerning that we have such a ubiquitous and foundational cause of a health problem that affects so many individuals in modern life. It’s important to understand that insomnia, as we know it, is a modern problem that was relatively nonexistent for most of our human history. In fact, researchers have shown that most modern hunter-gather societies (who are a mirror to our anthropological past) such as the Hadza of Tanzania, Ju/’Hoansi San of Namibia, and the Tsimané of Bolivia, don’t even have a word for insomnia because it is essentially nonexistent in their society.

Wiseman Health Take-Home Advice

Like all acute and chronic medical problems, insomnia has a multifactorial root cause etiology. However, decreasing artificial blue light exposure at night is an effective and controllable way that we can individually and culturally improve an epidemic health problem that affects so many of the world’s population. Here are some practical ways to eliminate most of the artificial blue light in your home at night:

1. Turn off the lights in rooms that aren’t in use at night. Most homes are overly illuminated in the evenings, which is unnecessary and worse, unhealthy.
2. Get a good quality pair of nighttime blue blocker glasses and wear them when looking at digital screens after dark. The Swanwick blue light blocking eyeglasses are an effective option.
3. You can change the setting on your devices — smartphones, tablets, and computers — so that the screen displays less blue and warmer amber color after dark. For example, on an iPhone, go to Settings > Display and Brightness > Night Shift. It’s best to schedule this “night shift” from 6:00 pm to 8:00 am. You can also use Night Shift on a Mac (e.g., laptop): Select the Apple menu > Go to System Settings, then click Displays > Select the Night Shift tab (you can create a custom Night Shift schedule, such as the recommended 6:00 pm to 8:00 am, or select the Sunset to Sunrise option based on your location’s sunset and sunrise, or the option to turn Night Shift on and off manually as needed).
4. For the rooms that you spend most of your time in at night, replace these lights with bulbs that emit no blue light or very low blue light, such as this light bulb that is 100% blue light free. The modern LED bulbs that have a low amount of blue light are commonly referred to as “Warm White,” “Amber,” or “Red” LED bulbs.
5. Invest in light dimmers, as they are especially useful for decreasing total nighttime light exposure.
6. Be patient. Making changes to artificial nighttime blue light exposure is a long-term strategy that resets the deeper subconscious parts of sleep. It is a foundational approach and takes time to reset circadian rhythms.
7. Reminder: the optimal goal after it gets dark is to decrease your overall artificial light exposure throughout the evening until you go to bed.
8. There are other behaviors and factors that both positively and negatively impact our sleep. To learn more, read our Wiseman Health article 12 Tips for Better Sleep.

Editor’s Note: This content was created by our Wiseman Health content and writing team, without the influence of artificial intelligence engines. Our goal is to be your trusted source for natural health and medical information.