Light mode is easier to read thanks to black-on-white text I think (I need to use bigger fonts in dark mode for the same readability). But to avoid issues with brightness I set monitor brightness to the minimum and set the background to light yellow ("solarized") rather than plain white.
> No one complains that reading something on paper burns out your retinas. A light mode shouldn't either.
The problem is that modern monitors are optimised for max brightness, not minimum. On my monitor I work on 0% brightness during the day. More is too bright already. During the night I turn down the contrast for lack of other options. That screws up colour depth though. Dark mode helps a ton too. A monitor that could display accurate colours at low brightness would be amazing but nobody cares enough to make one.
One is above my ThinkPad P1 or X1 Extreme in landscape mode, the other to the left in portrait mode. I use all three displays.
I calibrated all three displays with an X-Rite (now Calibrite) Display Pro using DisplayCAL software.
For the two external monitors, the calibrator came up with these settings:
Brightness: 27
Contrast: 70
Gamma: Gamma 1
The specific RGB settings are slightly different between the two. One is:
Red: 56
Green: 43
Blue: 40
And the other:
Red: 39
Green: 42
Blue: 42
This settings make light modes very comfortable on both monitors, either during the day or at night with the room lights on. They are on a dimmer so I can adjust the lighting for comfort.
For photo editing or watching a video, I crank up the brightness on the landscape monitor to 85.
I do something similar on my phone, a Samsung S24 Ultra. I use light themes and turn the phone brightness way down so it matches these other displays - unless I'm out in the sun and then I turn it way up.
I also turn up the brightness near max to look at photos or watch videos. Because of this, YouTube is the one app where I use a dark theme. This works well with the increased brightness.
That's interesting. It's exactly the monitor I have. But I'm very sensitive to light. During the day 0% brightness is bright enough for me already.
The problem for me is that I live in a very hot country but I don't have air conditioning. At night I leave the balcony doors wide open but I don't like to keep any lights on which attract bugs. The lights from the street are enough to move around by. Even with dark themes and the contrast and brightness set way down the LG is still a bit too bright for comfort. And when an app opens that doesn't do dark mode.. ouch
I also have an old crt terminal (a Dec VT520) and I can set that so dim I can barely read it under those circumstances without being bothered by pwm or loss of fidelity.
Ps I really lament the lack of 24" 4K models on the market these days :'( 27" is a bit too big
Ah yes, having to keep the room dark would certainly change things.
I wonder if you have tried some of the custom settings under Picture/Picture Mode and Picture/Color Adjust? Picture Mode has a couple of dark room settings, and Color Adjust may let you turn down the brightness farther than the normal brightness setting allows.
Agree completely on the 24" vs. 27", especially because I use one of my monitors in portrait mode. 27" would be way too tall!
Ah I tend to not use those kinds of modes at all. They're generally just preconfigured lists of settings that you can adjust yourself too. But I just tried them. My own "Custom" mode is darker than the dark room picture modes already :')
And that is what I use during the day - lol. This screen really is bad at low light performance. For the price (I think I paid 220 euro for it) I can forgive that because it's pretty decent in other ways.
You just need a well lit room to use light mode.