Backlight bleed is when light escapes from the edges and corners of your monitor for an lcd panel. It can be prevented and even fixed in some cases.
What is backlight bleed?
Backlight bleeding occurs for an lcd monitor when the active backlight of the monitor escapes the edges of the display frame.
Minimal backlight bleeding is normal due to how the monitor is built but too much can have a noticeable impact and impact screen brightness.
LCD monitors are powered by an led backlight, the crystal display blocks and allows light to pass through depending on the screen display.
However backlight bleeding occurs around the edges of the screen when light leaking out of the lcd displays doesn’t get fully blocked by the monitors bezels.
Most of the time minimal backlight bleeding is completely normal and not even noticeable but on the whole you want to avoid backlight bleeding from getting worse as it can create a noticeable ambient light especially on cheap monitors.
IPS Glow
IPS panels, due to the way they are built can lead to a similar effect to backlight bleeding called IPS glow.
Rather than backlight bleeding which occurs at the edges of the monitor, IPS glow impacts the corners of the actual screen. This becomes more evident if looking at a dark or black screen at a particular image from a certain angle.
This is not the same as backlight bleed which is a bigger issue.
Generally the quality of the monitor does play an impact and the better the monitor the lower chance you have of experiencing IPS glow and can never be fully prevented as it is just a factor of ips monitor technology.
How can you tell the difference between backlight leaking and IPS glow?
First do you have an IPS screen? If not then the issue can’t be an ips glow problem as the factor is exclusive to an ips panel.
The easy tell is whether light is coming out of a screen’s edges or on the corners of the display. If it is the edges, the light source is escaping the monitor altogether and will be backlight bleeding. The other way to tell is glow will look different depending on the angle of viewing while backlight bleed is uniform.
Burn In
The easiest thing to reember when doing a backlight bleed test is whether light is escaping the monitor entirely.
Burn-In is an annoying problem to deal with and very irritating if like me you have to stare at a screen all day long.
Burn-In appears on your screen when an image that shouldn’t be on the screen stays there when it shouldn’t. Often it will appear to be a faint outline of something that has been on your screen for a long period of time.
The biggest example of this is the menu bar or logo at the bottom of your screen, because they are on your screen for so long they can be burned in to the screen, also known as image persistance.
How to prevent Burn-In?
Luckily, this isn’t a common issue anymore and a good display manufacturer should have fixed it by now with new technology. The ideal solution is to turn your computer off when you aren’t using it.
It really is that simple.
How to fix Burn-In?
There are a couple of tricks to fix this issue but if it is really bad you might be beyond hope.
The first step is to turn your computer off for at least 48 hours, giving the display enough time to reset.
Next, set your screen to a white image or background for a few days, this should flush out all the colors of the previous logo or image burned in to the screen.
Clouding
Clouding appears where light shines through the display in irregular patches. It is caused by too much pressure on the display and common with panel warping. Most modern displays don’t have this issue.
As the display has been damaged and it no longer completely flat there is not much you can do to fix it. The entire surface is damaged and this is a bigger issue than extra light escaping from the backlight.
How to test for backlight bleeding?
Luckily there are plenty of tests to determine if backlight bleed occurs on your display. We need to test if the active backlight in the display is leaking around the edges.
To do this dim the lights in your room or enter a dark room and set the monitor brightness to a reasonable level. Then watch one of the videos on youtube for backlight bleeding (all of these are a black screen).
The idea is that if you experience backlight bleeding on a black screen then the light leaks easily and your monitor quality isn’t as good as it should be and you should be able to see how much of a serious problem it is.
Remember not to confuse with backlight bleed on your display with IPS glow or clouding. IPS glow will occur at the corners of the screen not the edges of the screen and clouding will appear to show bright spots.
No matter the brightness levels and viewing angle if your display has this problem it will be noticeable.
How can you prevent backlight bleeding?
As the old adage goes, prevention is better than a cure, ideally you don’t wand to experience any backlight bleed or at least slow it down so the issue doesn’t get worse.
Unfortunately, backlight bleeding will always occur in displays that use an active backlight. So the easiest way to prevent is by using oled displays instead. While investing in an oled display might be pricier it can be worth it in this area.
If you are too late and can’t afford oled displays than the easiest way to prevent is to turn the brightness down. Don’t use ambient lighting in the room, use a good external lighting source and don’t rely as much on the active backlight in your display.
How to fix backlight bleeding?
Well the easiest way to fix backlight bleeding once you’ve done the test is to take the monitor back. If you’re monitor is still under warranty then you can simply take it back to the manufacturer and get a new monitor.
At the end of the day this is what the manufactures warranty is for, especially if it a major issue and a new computer, you should have no troubles convincing them that this is not how a display should work.
Here is the number one method we recommend trying at home:
- slightly loosen the back of the display with a screwdriver, sometimes panel warping and backlight bleeding happens due to the display being too tight. Only very slightly loosening the screws should be enough.
- twist the frame a little.
- switch it on and see if that did the trick, if not there is one more step to try.
- use a microfiber cloth and run the areas whether the bleed seems to be occurring in a circular motion, again a little pressure not a lot is the key here.
If that didn’t do the trick there are some bush methods you can try (which we don’t recommend unless you know your way around technology).
- dismantle the back of the monitor and add black electrical tape around the edges, again we said this was a bush method and while it might help, won’t prevent the issue really.
- Apply local dimming on your monitor if this is an option, we’ve put this here because most monitors don’t have this option but if possible, dim the corners and edges of the screen.
Wrapping Up – Backlight Bleed
As you can see, backlight bleeding can be a serious pain and the easiest thing to do is return your monitor and get an oled display if you can.
That being said there are some basic and slightly stranger methods you can try to fix the issue or at least reduce the effects of the problem.