Living life at home has become the norm. Many of us work, go to school, and socialize at home or online. According to one study, people spend up to two additional hours per day on social media alone. Our kids spend a good chunk of the day on Zoom attending school and for many adults, work is conducted at home and online. This puts all of us in front of our devices and exposed to their blue light longer than usual.

The blue light that occurs naturally from the sun keeps us alert and lifts our mood in daylight. When the sun sets and blue light wanes, this triggers our brains to produce melatonin and prepare for sleep. Our screens also emit blue light; however, this blue light isn’t regulated by the natural sunrise and sunset. This blue light suppresses melatonin keeping us awake. Our brains just don’t know when to shut down. Measures to filter out blue light include installing specific software, placing a filter over your computer screen, or wearing blue light filtering eyewear. Of course, the best practice is to put the devices down (and turn the blue light off) thirty minutes before bed.

Since blue and orange are opposite each other on the color wheel, orange is the go-to color for counteracting all the increased blue light. At AMI, we are cutting out some blue light and working on adding more orange to our lives – and we don’t mean the orange sky day we experienced recently due to wildfires. We are figuring out how to adjust to the increased screen time by balancing life out with more orange. For some of us that means bringing orange flowers into our homes or putting blue light glasses on our kids or pets. For others it means carving Halloween pumpkins or simply laying in a field of pumpkins. We are doing whatever it takes to reduce the amount of blue light staring us in the face.