Coloured overlays and visual stress

Some people read more comfortably through a tint. Here is what that is, what the research actually shows, and how to work out whether it helps you.

Last updated September 2026

What people describe

Ask someone who finds reading uncomfortable to describe the page, and you tend to hear the same handful of things. The words look like they are moving slightly. The white background seems to glare, or to shimmer between the lines. Letters swap places, or blur at the edges after a few minutes. Lines are hard to keep track of, so the eye slips to the wrong one and the sentence stops making sense.

None of that is about intelligence or effort, and it is not the same thing as dyslexia, though the two often turn up together. It is usually described as visual stress, sometimes called Meares-Irlen syndrome. Reading becomes tiring out of proportion to the work involved, and the tiredness arrives faster than it should.

What a coloured overlay is

The original version is a sheet of tinted plastic laid over the page. It does two simple things: it cuts the brightness of the white paper, and it shifts the colour of the light reaching the eye. On a screen, software does the same job by drawing a translucent colour over what you are reading.

The idea goes back to the 1980s, when Olive Meares and, separately, Helen Irlen described people whose reading discomfort eased when the page was tinted. What has always been striking is how personal the effect is. One person is comfortable with a soft yellow and finds blue unpleasant; the next reports exactly the reverse. There is no single correct colour, which is part of why the whole area is difficult to study.

What the evidence does and doesn't show

This is where we want to be straight with you, because plenty of software in this area is not.

Large reviews of the research have not found consistent evidence that coloured overlays or tinted lenses improve reading accuracy or speed in people with dyslexia. Professional bodies in ophthalmology and paediatrics have said as much directly: dyslexia is a language-processing difference, not a problem with the eyes, and tinting the page does not treat it. Studies that do report gains tend to be small, and it is genuinely hard to separate a real effect from expectation when a participant can see which condition they are in.

What is less disputed is that some people consistently report that reading feels easier through a tint: less glare, less fatigue, more willingness to keep going. Comfort is not nothing. Someone who reads for twenty minutes instead of giving up after five has gained something real, whatever the mechanism turns out to be.

Rule out the ordinary explanations first

Before spending time on colours, it is worth eliminating the things that are easier to fix and more commonly the actual cause:

• Have an eye test. Uncorrected long-sightedness, astigmatism, and difficulty with the eyes working together as a pair all produce exactly these symptoms, and all are treatable. This is the single most useful step, and in the UK an eye test is free for under-16s, students, and several other groups.
• Check your screen brightness against the room. A screen much brighter than its surroundings is tiring regardless of colour. The screen should look like a well-lit page, not a lamp.
• Try making the text bigger. More than a few people who reach for a tint are really struggling with small text and tight line spacing.
• Look at the lighting. Flickering overhead fluorescents are a known trigger for the same kind of discomfort.

If reading is still uncomfortable once those are dealt with, a tint is a reasonable next thing to try.

Finding a colour that suits you

The only method that works is trying them, because the useful colour varies from person to person and cannot be predicted from anything else about you.

1. Use real reading material. Test on a page you would genuinely read, not a line of sample text. The effect shows up over minutes, not seconds.
2. Read for five to ten minutes in each colour. You are not looking for an instant transformation. You are looking for where your eyes are less tired at the end.
3. Adjust the strength as well as the hue. Most people who find a tint helpful end up with a light one. If the text looks muddy or you find yourself leaning in, it is too strong.
4. Check it in the light you normally read in. A colour that works at a sunny desk can be wrong in a dim room at night.
5. Come back to it another day. If the same colour still feels better a few days later, that is a more reliable signal than a first impression.

Colours people commonly settle on

Yellows and peaches are the most frequently chosen, blues and greens not far behind, and a reasonable number of people prefer something outside that range entirely. Treat these as starting points rather than recommendations.

Tracking lines, rather than glare

Not everyone's difficulty is about brightness. If your problem is losing your place, skipping lines or re-reading the same one, a tint may not be the answer at all. What helps there is a reading ruler: a mask that dims everything except a band of text, so there is only one line to attend to and the eye has somewhere obvious to return to.

The paper version is a strip of card with a window cut in it. On screen, the same idea is sometimes called letterbox mode.

Where WinShades comes in

WinShades does both of these on Windows: a tint in any colour and strength you like, over a single window or your whole screen, and a reading ruler you can drag to follow the text. It also reads text aloud, checks spelling, and takes dictation, since the same people who want a tint often want those too.

Because the useful colour is personal and cannot be guessed, there is a free trial. Try the colours on your own reading, in your own lighting, and see whether any of them makes a difference before you pay for anything.

Try WinShades from the Microsoft Store

Common questions

Will a coloured overlay cure my dyslexia?

No, and nobody should tell you otherwise. Dyslexia is a difference in how written language is processed, and tinting the page does not change that. What a tint may do is make reading physically more comfortable, which is a separate and more modest claim.

My child's school mentioned overlays. Is that worth pursuing?

It is a low-risk thing to try, and many schools keep a set of coloured sheets for exactly this. Do get an eye test first, though: a straightforward vision problem is a more common explanation and a more satisfying one to fix.

Is screen tinting the same as night mode or dark mode?

Not quite. Night light and similar features shift the whole display towards warm orange to reduce blue light in the evening, with no choice of colour. Dark mode inverts the page to light text on dark. A coloured overlay keeps your normal layout and lays a colour of your choosing over the top, at whatever strength suits you. They can be used together, though it is worth changing one thing at a time.

How do I tint my screen without buying anything?

Windows has several built-in options that cost nothing, and they are worth trying first. We have written them up in how to tint your screen on Windows, including what each one can and cannot do.