An inadequately designed display viewed in the dark can easily cause dazzling glare and affect our night vision. In this paper we test a display design in which the spectral light emission is selected to reduce the impact of the display on night vision performance while at the same time ensuring good display legibility. We use long-wavelength light (red) that is easily visible to daylight vision photoreceptors (cones) but almost invisible to night vision photoreceptors (rods). We verify rod-cone separation in a psychophysical experiment, in which we measure contrast detection in the presence of a colored source of glare. In a separate user study we measure the range of display brightness settings that provide good legibility and are not distracting under low ambient lighting. Our results can serve as a guidelines for designing the displays that change their color scheme at low ambient light levels.

Most displays viewed in dark environments can easily cause dazzling glare and affect a viewer’s dark adaptation state (night vision). In previous work we showed that legibility could be improved and dark adaptation preserved in low-light environments by using a display design with a specially selected spectral light emission. We used long-wavelength light (red) that is easily visible to daylight vision photoreceptors (cones) but almost invisible to night vision photoreceptors (rods). In this paper we conduct an experiment in which we show that negative polarity (bright text on a dark background) produces better performance in a legibility task than does positive polarity (dark text on a bright background). Our results can serve as a guidelines for designing displays that change their color scheme at low ambient light levels.