Backlight Bleed: Everything You Need To Know

Backlight Bleed
6 min readNov 10, 2021

Backlight bleeding is a widespread problem that plagues many devices. It’s especially prevalent in devices with LED or IPS screens, and it can be distracting or even annoying to deal with. Fortunately, there are some things you can do about this issue!

Let’s dive in and learn about backlight bleeds in depth

Backlight Bleed

What Is Backlight Bleed?

Backlight bleed is when the backlights of your screen are not completely blocked by the black border around your display.

This results in a small amount of light bleeding through onto the front of your display, which causes you to notice brighter areas on the screen that shouldn’t be there.

It occurs when the backlighting of your device bleeds through onto the screen itself. This can make certain areas of your screen brighter than others, which is not only distracting but also looks bad. And since it seems like nearly everyone who has an LCD/LED display suffers from this problem at one time or another, We’ll explain why it happens and what you can do about it if you’re unlucky enough to have this issue on your own device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vecsubZrpfs

How Does Backlight Bleed Occur?

The backlight bleeding effect is caused when the black borders around your screen are not completely dark.

This means that the display manufacturer simply did not cut out a large enough hole in order to block all of the light from passing through. The result is a noticeable difference in brightness on the front of your phone, which can be distracting or even look bad.

It can also occur by using old PC motherboards. So, if you are using an outdated pc motherboard, then you might need a replaced one. Here is an article with Best Budget AM3+ Motherboard, So you can consider to checkout them.

Image Source — Cubic.fm
Image Source — Cubic.fm

Why Does Backlight Bleed Happen?

Backlight bleed is common on many displays because it’s an inherent flaw with how the manufacturing process works. The display itself is essentially a large array of LEDs behind your screen, and those LEDs are arranged in several different patterns (stripes, lines, grids, etc). The factory that builds the display has to precisely place all of these LEDs in very specific locations.

This is how your screen gets the hundreds (or thousands) of dots that make up what you see on it! So when they’re finished building one of these displays, there have to be a few small holes left open to allow for access to the LEDs. When it comes time to place your screen in the frame, they’ll take great care to make sure that none of these remaining holes and/or edges are visible on the front of your display.

But there’s also a good chance that you’ll still get backlight bleed if one or more of these holes aren’t completely blocked. That’s just how it works! The more LEDs on your device, the more likely you are to see backlight bleed.

In some cases, these holes may be visible from a certain angle when you tilt the screen forward or backward. In others, they might only be noticeable when you view your device from an angle in your hand. But in all cases, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to see the light through these gaps at some point or another.

Why Is It That Some Monitors Don’t Have Backlights Bleed?

Even though backlight bleed is an inherent problem that plagues many devices with LED displays, not everyone experiences this issue. After all, you’re only likely to notice it if your screen has hundreds of LEDs, and if you don’t have enough LEDs then you won’t have enough possible holes to allow for backlight bleed!

This means that people with smaller or lower-quality screens are less likely to see this issue on their devices. Only the high-end models with big screens are likely to experience anything noticeable, and that means that backlight bleeds typically only affects a small percentage of the market.

And even if you do get backlight bleed, sometimes it won’t bother you enough to point out or even notice! After all, most phones are designed to be used in all kinds of lighting conditions, and the screen will typically appear bright enough no matter what. If you’re not looking for it specifically, then it might fly right under your radar until you see someone else’s device with this issue!

Is Backlight Bleed Always Bad?

It depends on how much light is coming through the holes in your display. The more light there is, the more distracting it’ll be when viewing darker content (such as games or movies). If there isn’t much light coming through, though, then you might not even notice it.

But we should point out that this isn’t always a bad thing! That’s because backlight bleed can actually be utilized as a software feature — and there are already apps available in the Google Play Store that will allow you to filter and modify your backlight bleed for things like brightening up darker images or tweaking the color of those lights to make them stand out more (or less). This works particularly well on AMOLED displays since they can individually control each pixel on the display, but it’s also possible with other types as well.

What Can You Do About Backlight Bleeds?

If you find that your device has some noticeable bleeding around the edges of the screen, then there’s a good chance that you’ll just have to live with it unless your manufacturer offers a warranty replacement.

There’s usually little that can be done without modifying your device in some way, and we highly recommend against making any modifications to your display hardware as you could potentially cause permanent damage if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.

If the bleeding bothers you enough though, most manufacturers do offer replacements for devices under warranty or with an insurance claim. And even if they won’t replace the item itself, the retailer should still allow returns at no charge regardless of whether something is wrong or not! Just make sure to exercise this option quickly before they try to refuse it later on…

How much backlight bleed is acceptable?

Very little backlight bleed is considered acceptable by almost anyone, especially if the bleed is noticeable when you’re viewing darker images or videos. If it’s there but not too bad, then you’ll just have to get used to it — your device will probably look fine in bright lighting conditions, but you might see some issues when using it in dark areas like movie theaters (where ambient light can sneak around your screen borders).

But anything noticeable should be covered under warranty through the manufacturer! And even if they won’t fix your device for free, retailers often offer returns on devices that are still under warranty — so make use of this option if something is wrong and doesn’t feel good, try to return it.

Conclusion

We hope that this article has been helpful in showing you whether or not your device might have backlight bleed, and what you can do if it does — most manufacturers will offer warranty replacements for certain issues like this even if it isn’t specifically called out as a flaw somewhere.

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