What is IPS?

An IPS display is a liquid crystals screen technology. Typically, an IPS display consists of a liquid-crystals layer placed between two glass layers. Additionally, the liquid crystals are designed to face predetermined directions, which we will further explain why it is significant for IPS panels.

The panel frame construction is such that the bright light it can produce makes it perfect for color-focused purposes. For example, you would not necessarily need an IPS monitor for competitive gaming (although they are still great for gamers), but the IPS display is excels for photographers, filmmakers, editors, and content creators in general.

Having said that, you might have heard of the dreaded “IPS glow” and perhaps seen it yourself. It is a white or light bluish light on the edges of the screen and is often most visible in a dark room, from a certain viewing angle, or when you have a black screen.

However, sometimes there might be abnormalities in your IPS glow, or even if not, it could also just bother you. Before we dive into fixing a bad IPS glow or telling you how to reduce IPS glow, let us explain what IPS glow is and whether you should be worried about it.

What is IPS glow?

IPS glow refers to an excess light that most people tend to see at the very far edges of their IPS outer panel frame. Every kind of monitor has some IPS glow. This is completely normal and not harmful, so you do not have to worry. However, how much IPS glow you see and whether it is a bad IPS glow can be easily pointed out with the viewing angle.

IPS glow does not indicate any malfunction, manufacturing defect, or issue with your inner IPS frame or outer IPS frame panels. It is simply an excess light passing and going through the display panel from the IPS display panel.

You can see if your IPS panel has this effect by observing the far edges in a dark room or darker environment. Other kinds of screen glow, potentially caused by ambient light, should not be confused with an IPS glow. You can tell if it is an IPS glow by seeing if the glow gets dimmer the more you tilt the screen to central viewing angles.

There are ways to test and fix IPS glow, such as lowering screen brightness. If you suffer from attention problems and find the excess light from the IPS display distracting, you can try that or try sitting far away from it in a brightly lit room.

You can change your default screen brightness to around 60-70% and your default contrast to 70%-80%, or at least until a less obvious IPS glow appears.

IPS glow tends to be white. It also should change (in appearance) if you look at it from different angles. If it is in a different color, other than a white to a light bluish color, and if the light does not go away regardless of your angle, you may have a case of backlight bleeding, which we will go over in a bit.

Tell me the best way to test IPS monitor glow?

The best way to test IPS glow in your computer monitor is to make your monitor screen entirely black. You can open a black screen window or a dark image.

The next thing you want to do is do the same thing again, but with your room lights. Darken your room as much as you can because you will be able to observe the IPS glow a lot better in dark rooms.

They may not be necessary, depending on your room or ambient lighting and the intensity of your IPS glow. A computer monitor can have a strong glowing light that the IPS flow is visible in all ambient lights. Some might be a little harder to notice in bright lights in the room, especially when all the lights are on.

IPS is fairly easy to see, but the real test is whether it is IPS glow or something else. You can view it from different angles, such as a diagonal one. Ideally, this should lessen the glow in your perception because the light in the display panel is only at the far edges.

However, if this light persists at all angles, it is probably not IPS. Similarly, it would help if you observed the tint and hue of the light. It is probably backlight bleeding instead of IPS if it shows a yellowish tint.

How to reduce IPS glow?

You can reduce IPS glow by adjusting your display panel towards the dead center. This can help make it less visible.

You can also try sitting further away from the light if it is particularly bothersome.

Unfortunately, there is no way to fix the IPS glow of your IPS panel completely.

You can also increase the brightness to the percentages mentioned above. You can also set your brightness settings around 120 cd/m, this might take a while, but you will suffer the IPS glow less than before.

You can also try adjusting it at different heights with a test screen open in a dark room. It will help you see which angle and height it is least visible at, and you can set your display panel accordingly. Ideally, you want a distance between 80 to 120 cm.

This method does not work for everyone but has been recommended online enough to be worth mentioning: massaging with a microfiber cloth.

You need to get a microfiber cloth and gently massage the ends of your screen where the glows are. This method has not been proven to work always, but you don’t lose anything by giving it a shot.

A more hands-on approach is adjusting your panel’s frame construction. You want to avoid loosening the inner panel frames from the metal encasings. Which then leads to the outer panel unnecessarily pushing against the inner one. Eventually, this can increase backlight bleeding.

A few more tips are provided by W2Best in this awesome video on IPS glow:

What’s the difference between Backlight Bleed and IPS Glow?

The biggest difference between backlight bleeding and IPS monitor glow is that the former is your IPS’ backlight shining visibly through your screen, usually around the edges.

IPS glow more or less due to a minor difference in IPS technology, and it is not a proper defect or issue within the monitor, except in extreme cases. A backlight bleed is a proper defect with your monitor.

Also, the IPS glow tends to be around the farthest corners, whereas the backlight glow tends to be somewhere around the edges.

Backlight glow, as mentioned before, does not change from any angle either.

Backlight bleeding is a little more common with curved displays, and unlike IPS glow, it is only visible on pitch-black screens.

There are a few ways to reduce your backlight bleeding, and higher-end models tend to have less of this issue than lower-end ones. You can try some of the things suggested for reducing IPS glows. However, adjusting it at a different angle/height won’t do anything here.

One important thing to note is that you might have two computer monitors that are more or less identical, but one of them might have backlight bleeding. It is because the make of each monitor is fundamentally different, so when you go to buy yours, make sure you check for these defects.

If you try to use your warranty, they most likely will not accept backlight bleeding as a proper issue. Therefore, it is better to do your homework and have a glow-free monitor!