As an exasperated owner of a monitor that seemed inexplicably too bright, I found myself asking, why is my monitor so bright? After a bit of research and testing, I’m here to share the solutions I found to this very common problem. Hopefully, this blog post will help other frustrated tech users save some time and energy troubleshooting this issue.
A lot of calibration modes and settings can control the monitor’s brightness, such as Display Settings, percentage of blue light, dynamic contrast, and Gamma modes on the monitor settings itself.
| Causes | Solutions | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Brightness Preferences in Display Settings | Adjust brightness in Windows Settings | Access Display settings in Windows and adjust brightness using the seeker. |
| Monitor’s Own Settings | Adjust monitor settings manually | Use auxiliary buttons on the monitor to access the settings menu and adjust brightness and display mode presets. |
| GPU Driver Program Settings | Adjust contrast and brightness through GPU driver program | Locate and adjust brightness settings in your GPU’s utility program (e.g., NVIDIA Control Panel or Radeon Settings). |
| Color Temperature Settings | Change color temperature presets | Opt for a neutral or warmer preset to reduce the intensity of blue light, which can appear brighter to our eyes. |
| Dynamic/Adaptive Contrast | Disable dynamic contrast | Turn off dynamic contrast enhancement in the control panel of your video card (e.g., NVIDIA Control Panel). |
| Outdated Graphics Driver | Update graphics driver | Download and install the latest graphics driver for your GPU model from your GPU provider’s official website (e.g., AMD, NVIDIA, or Intel). |
Table of Contents
1. Brightness Preferences in Display Settings
The first thing that might cause a monitor to appear so bright is how you set the brightness preferences.
Of course, if you’re on a laptop, you can adjust the brightness using keyboard hotkeys, which are usually the “Fn” button + other buttons like ↑ or other buttons from F1 to F12.
You can also adjust the brightness of a monitor by opening the Windows Settings and choosing Display from the sidebar, then adjust the brightness with the seeker.
2. Monitor’s Own Settings
In addition to brightness settings on your computer, your monitor will come with its own settings that can impact the brightness of your screen.
In most cases, you can adjust the settings of your monitor manually through the auxiliary buttons on the monitor itself.
You can find these buttons somewhere around the bezel of the monitor (usually the sides bottom) or at the back of the monitor.
Keep in mind that different monitors will have different layouts for the settings menu. You can locate the button and navigate through the settings by checking the monitor’s user manual.
After opening the menu, check the brightness settings and tune it down until the monitor isn’t too bright. You can also adjust the display mode by choosing from various presets.
3. Contrast and Brightness Settings Through GPU Driver Program
Depending on the type of graphics card that you have installed on your computer, you’ll have different GPU windows utilities and programs to control various display settings.
For example, NVIDIA GPUs will use the NVIDIA Control Panel while AMD will use the Radeon Settings.
Depending on your GPU manufacturer, you should check the brightness settings on these programs and tune them down until the monitor isn’t too bright for you.
4. Color Temperature Settings
LCD and LED monitors work through tiny diodes that emit red, green, and blue at various intensities in order to illuminate the pixels in millions of colors.
However, in most monitors, there are color temperature settings/presets, in which colors are warmer by increasing the intensity of red lights and cooler by increasing the intensity of blue color.
Since blue light is more fatiguing on the eyes than other colors, our eyes perceive blue lights as brighter.
To tune this down, you can opt for neutral mode (all diodes emit light at the same intensity) or switch to a warmer preset.
5. Dynamic/Adaptive Contrast
Dynamic contrast is a feature that enables your monitor to adjust the brightness, contrast, and colors in order to improve the visual quality and experience for users.
Depending on how sensitive your eyes are and how they react to rapid changes in contrast, this feature might give you a false impression that the monitor is too bright.
In that case, disabling this feature should easily solve the problem. You can easily do this through the control panel of your video card.
- Right-click on the desktop and choose NVIDIA Control Panel
- Select “Adjust Video Color Settings”
- Check the “With Nvidia Settings” section, and uncheck “dynamic contrast enhancement”
- Restart your computer\
6. Outdated Graphics Driver
In some cases, you might adjust the monitor brightness to a decent level, only for it to return back to the maximum level again on its own.
If that happens to you, your graphics driver is probably unstable or outdated, so the best course of action here is to update it with the latest version.
To update your graphics driver, all you have to do is go to your GPU provider’s official website, whether you’re using AMD, NVIDIA, or Intel.
There, you’ll need to choose your GPU model and download the latest driver for your windows version.
Wrap Up
Since you can control the brightness of your display through a wide variety of methods, any of them could be the culprit behind the monitor’s noticeably high brightness.
By following the previously mentioned points and testing them out, you should be able to troubleshoot most problems that cause the high brightness.
If all else fails, there might be a problem with your monitor or graphics card, so you might want to take your computer to a service center to be checked thoroughly.
