You may have heard that you need a pair of the best blue light blocking glasses if you want to use your phone, laptop or TV late into the night but still sleep well. The idea is that the lenses filter out the parts of light that disrupt our bodies' processes.
There's no definitive evidence that blue light does effect your sleep, or that blue light blocking glasses help, but some people find it more comfortable to look at the display with them on and there's little risk in experimenting to see if they do work for you.
But a quick Google or Amazon search returns literally thousands of options; so how do you decide which ones to buy? That's why we've put together our picks of the best blue light blocking glasses to help narrow your choices without breaking the bank.
It's been a while since we updated this list, and some products we used to recommend have been discontinued. While we work on new reviews, we've highlighted a few options worth considering, though we haven't had hands-on time with these. If you're not sure where to start, Gunnar (the favorite of gamers) have a massive selection.
Best blue light blocking glasses you can buy right now
Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate.
Prospek's blue light blocking glasses are very popular — not surprising, really, as they're pretty affordable, come in a load of different styles, and have only a slight yellow tint in the lenses rather than a harsher orange filter.
This makes them a great, versatile choice if you want a pair that'll work whether you're gaming, reading your phone in bed, or working on a laptop late in the evening. But it's also important to set your expectations before you buy.
The company claims that the glasses come with "Electromagnetic Ray Blocking" — most reports suggest this isn't likely, as this is a specialized feature typically only found on technical glasses for specific electronics uses.
Gunnar's blue light blocking glasses are specifically targeted as gamers, with loads of limited edition collab frames with big gaming franchises like Assassin's Creed, Blizzard and Fallout — but they're not only for gamers.
The company has one of the largest ranges of blue light glasses, with many, many frame styles, prescription lenses and different lens filters. They're more expensive than the kind of thing that comes up on Amazon, but most people think they're worth it.
Instead of feeling like a flimsy pair of cheap plastic frames, these feel just as durable and premium as a regular pair of reading glasses. They also tend to look less like filtered glasses, and much more like the the kind of thing you could wear all day.
I tested (and still use) a pair of the Gunnar Groot, Marvel Edition blue light blocking glasses, although these are sadly discontinued now. But they're comfortable, lightweight, and I barely notice that I'm wearing them.
The fit is particularly good, and you can easily wear these throughout the day without them looking like anything other than tinted glasses — so no weird stares from strangers as I walk to the station with them, for instance.
I tested the Amber lens, so it did mean that everything was a bit yellow if you wear them around the house or away from a display, but the lenses are also easy to clean so it becomes easy to keep them on all day without really noticing.
Do blue light blocking glasses really work?
Here's a quick run down of what blue light glasses claim to help with:
- Reduce eye strain and fatigue
- Improve sleep duration
- Reduce time to fall asleep
But are these glasses really just a solution looking for a problem? And does blue light really make us sleep worse anyway?
Well, the answer isn't quite clear either way. There have been studies published looking at the link between sleep and blue light blocking glasses, but there's no consistent answer that really definitively shows the benefit (or not).
Partly, this is because the studies have been on small groups (generally less than 20 people) and over short periods (around a week or two), making it hard to pull out more general conclusions.
And even those small studies are inconsistent with their findings; some show an improvement in time to fall asleep (about 3 minutes faster) while others found an increase in self-reported sleep duration.
But I also created a report on the evidence with the analysis tool Elicit, which included some studies that showed the opposite effect (longer to fall asleep, less sleep overall) but most found no effect at all.
I'm not saying you shouldn't buy blue light blocking glasses — there's no harm in using them — but you're not likely to suddenly get better, longer sleep just from wearing them.
It's best to see them as one tool that may improve your sleep, especially when worn alongside a renewed focus on sleep hygiene and trying to work you could do to fall asleep faster.
