How to Transform Your TV with a $30 LED Strip for Eye Comfort

You’ve probably seen those colorful LED light strips that change colors in harmony with your TV screen. Personally, I’m not a fan. While they might be visually striking, they often become quite distracting—especially when they malfunction, which is more common than you’d think. These lights can alter the perceived color of your picture and they’re also quite pricey.

If you’re looking for a more effective and budget-friendly solution to enhance your TV viewing experience, I have a great recommendation: the Scenic Labs LX1 Bias Lighting strip. I’ve been using it for several years now and can’t recommend it enough.

This product is indeed a light strip, but unlike the flashy color-changing versions, this one emits a steady white light at a color temperature of 6500 Kelvin—identical to the standard daylight white used by TV calibrators and professional filmmakers.

Instead of creating an elaborate light show, this “bias” light strip casts a soft glow at about 10 to 15 percent of your TV’s maximum brightness. When calibrated correctly, it’s so subtle that you might hardly notice it during an evening of binge-watching. However, this gentle illumination serves several important functions.

First, the 6500K tuning ensures that the colors on your screen appear more natural. This temperature is the standard for “white” in the video word, so by having a gentle glow behind your TV, you’ll see colors closer to what the creators intended. In contrast, those flashy color-shifting LED strips can distort the picture.

Second, using a properly tuned 6500K light strip can significantly enhance the perceived contrast of your TV’s image—especially if you’re not using an OLED screen. The soft halo from the strip makes dark areas appear more pronounced than they would in a completely dark room, providing a quasi HDR-like effect. While this enhancement may be less noticeable on OLED TVs due to their superior contrast, older models can greatly benefit from an inexpensive LED addition.

Ben Patterson/Foundry

Lastly, a white-light LED strip can alleviate the eye strain that often accompanies watching a bright screen in a dark environment. By providing a modest amount of ambient light, this subtle glow helps to ease the harsh contrast between a bright screen and a dark room, giving your eyes a much-needed break and reducing the chances of discomfort like soreness, watery eyes, or headaches.

The Scenic Labs LX1 Bias Lighting strip—my top choice and also a TechHive Editors’ Pick—is available for direct order starting at $26.95 for a one-meter strip up to $51.95 for six meters. While this may be slightly higher than some sales you find on Amazon, this strip is renowned for its precision in color tuning, and it’s been reliable for me for three years.

If you’re looking for alternatives, there are budget options like this 6500K light strip from Govee, priced at around $30 for 16.4 feet.

In any case, I wholeheartedly recommend a bias LED light strip for any TV owner—and they work exceptionally well on PC monitors too (I have a couple set up in my office).