Good desk lighting isn't about brightness — it's about killing glare and eye strain without turning your setup into a nightclub. The right approach depends on your desk shape.

Standard desks

Run an LED strip along the back edge of the desk, behind your monitor(s), pointed at the wall rather than at your eyes — this creates ambient bias lighting that reduces the contrast between a bright screen and a dark room, which is the actual cause of most screen-related eye fatigue. Add a monitor light bar (mounted above or below the display) as your primary task light instead of an overhead room light — it lights your desk surface without casting screen glare. Keep both on a warm-to-neutral color temperature (around 4000K) rather than harsh white; it's easier on your eyes for long sessions.

L-shaped desks

The corner is the tricky part — it's where most L-shaped setups end up either under-lit or with one wing bright and the other dark. Run LED strip along both wings separately rather than trying to stretch one continuous run around the corner; a corner joint in strip lighting is a common failure point and looks messy. Treat each wing as its own zone: your primary monitor wing gets a light bar like a standard desk, and your secondary wing (writing space, secondary monitor, whatever it's doing) gets its own strip run so you're not lighting an empty corner more than your actual work surface. If you use RGB strips for ambience, keep the accent color consistent across both wings — mismatched color temperature between the two sides is the single most common thing that makes an L-shaped setup look unfinished.