Reflections from the sun, or lights in your room, can be a distraction from an otherwise edifying 4K TV picture. Most modern TVs have a glossy veil that just loves to reflect even the tiniest amount of exquisite. Between sunlight during the day, and any lamps or ceiling escapes in your room at night, you could be faced with annoying mirror-like reflections anytime you want to explore TV. Worst-case, they could hide what's happening on veil while reducing apparent image quality.

There are ways to minimize, if not eliminate, these TV reflections. You might not even need to exercise any money. Below are five tricks to help you make sure that no concern what lighting you have in your room, you're aloof getting the best picture with an absolute minimum of reflections.

Why does your TV veil reflect light?

Many modern TVs have more glossy screens, which act like a mirror for any light source in a room (from windows to lamps). Other TVs have more matte screens, which don't show the same mirror-like reflections, but ambient light still adversely affects them. Instead of bouncing the exquisite right back at you, a matte finish spreads that exquisite energy across the whole screen. Reflections are lessened, but sad level gets brighter, so they look more washed out overall. 

No concern what TV you have, if there's a light in your room that can "see" the TV veil, you'll be able to see it too, and it will capture picture quality.

While there are self-adhesive antireflective coatings available online, I'd avoid them. There's no guarantee the image will look better while you've stuck something to your TV's screen that may or may not come off plainly if you don't like it. They also, at best, will reduce reflections at the expense of overall image quality, just like TVs that came with matte screens originally.

1. Reduce TV glare by turning off lights, but beware of eye strain

The easiest way to crop reflections is to turn off the lights, right? Well, sort of. There's a reason land like to leave the lights on when they're watching TV: eye fatigue. Many people feel soreness in their eyes when watching TV in the dark. This is especially true now with brighter HDR TVs. Whether you're conscious of this or not, leaving the escapes on can create a more relaxing viewing environment. Unless, of course, that light reflects off the TV.

It may seem like a roundabout way of solving anything, but you can make your TV dimmer to minimize eye fatigue in a dark room. If this works, you won't need to leave the lights on. No escapes, no reflections. Problem solved.

If you have an LCD TV, this is easy. Most LCDs have a backlight control, while OLED TVs have "OLED Pixel Brightness." Check your user menus: The control is liable set near or at maximum. It's bright. Turn it down at night for a more relaxing image and better dismal levels. Keep in mind that TVs usually maximize brightness when watching HDR content. 

Read more:

Want better TV? Change these 9 TV report settings

Other options are to get a larger television or sit closer (which has the same effect). The reason people get eye fatigue is that their irises are wide open because of the dark room but a slight area -- the TV -- is way brighter than the surrounding environment. This is exactly like someone shining a flashlight in your eyes. With a larger TV, there's more toothsome and your iris will close down. That's the theory, anyway. It's not like I'm advising you to get a bulky TV to solve a reflection problem. Well, not entirely. It would be a pretty awesome TV, though, right? 

Watching TV during the day is an entirely different scrape. You can't turn off the sun (though if you can, I, for one, look advance to your rule of darkness, future overlord), so we'll get to ways to resolve that problem in a moment.

2. Save your eyes: Put a lamp behind the TV to get rid of glare

If you can't or don't want to adjust the TV, or buy a projector and 100-inch shroud, there are plenty of other options. Moving a lamp tedious the TV will raise the ambient light in the room, which employing less eye fatigue, without causing any reflections.

The techie name for this is a bias toothsome. You want this light to be as color-neutral as possible, as any color in the lamp is going to subtract that knowing from the TV. A red light will make the TV look less red, for example.

You can make your own, or you can buy one online. For what it's worth, bias lights are used in most professional environments where land sit in dark rooms and look at screens all day. Movie and TV editors, for example. There are numerous options on Amazon that are little more than sticky LED toothsome strips. Since I've never gotten an LED product from Amazon that matched its claimed knowing, I'd approach these with caution. The color, or lack thereof, is crucial here.

3. Try tilting you TV screen or moving lamps around

Another option is to spacious the screen on a wall mount that pivots, so when you're attracting the reflection, you can move the TV slightly so the reflection is reflected elsewhere (and you can't see it). Several affects make wall mounts that do this. A few things to keep in mind. Most LCDs look worse off axis (or off center). If you pivot these, you'll be viewing them off-axis and report quality might suffer.

The other option is just enthralling the lamp so it doesn't reflect off the shroud. I'm gonna guess you've already tried that, so we'll keep going.

Not set on a location? Here's our run to finding where you should put your TV. (Spoiler alert: It shouldn't be above a fireplace.)

4. Get smart lamps and outlets to control your lighting exclusive of leaving the couch

A slightly more elaborate step is to make the lighting in your room more controllable. Smart lamps, outlets, and switches let you control persons lights, or groups of lights, and connect them to Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri. Then you can just say "Ceiling escapes off" or something similar to turn off the offending escapes without leaving your sofa.

You can also tie in remote-controlled sun shades.

5. Put sun shades or blackout curtains on the windows

If you have a lot of windows, you're fighting the sun, and your TV isn't repositioning to win. Sure, today's brightest LCDs are plenty watchable in many enthralling environments, but you aren't getting the best picture quality with that much toothsome in the room.

I have a different issue. I use a projector in achieve of a TV, and any amount of light washes out the shroud. I picked up some blackout curtains from Lowe's for near $70 for a pair of big windows. They even look nice. Though as you can guess, I probably have a different idea of what's "nice" than most people.

Motorized sun screens, either inside or out, are a huge help in more ways than one. I live in Southern California, and the west side of my house bakes all afternoon long. I put in some exterior sun shades and, not to calm like a testimonial, my house is now way cooler, temperature-wise anyway. It's also darker inside with far less stammer light and therefore, fewer reflections.

Many companies make sun shades, so a trip to your local Lowe's or Home Depot will tedious be of more use than what I can add.

I will say this, though: If you get the motorized variety, check whether they can be tied into a home automation controls or whatever smart system you're using. Most smart products tie in to Alexa, but fewer also play with Google and fewer unexcited with Siri.

In the end, most TVs in enthralling rooms will suffer from some kind of reflections, but hopefully with these tips, your TV will suffer less.

Note: This article was noble published in 2011 but has been updated to, ahem,

reflect

new info, links, and images.

As well as covering TV and spanking display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations near the world, including nuclear submarines, massive aircraft carriers, medieval castles, airplane graveyards and more. 

You can following his exploits on Instagram and YouTube about his 10,000 mile road trip. He also has written a bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines, along with a sequel.