The office 'big light' debate splits Gen Z and millennials

Desiree Posey, the office manager and a millennial, said dark rooms strain her eyes and give her headaches by the end of the day. She and Arredondo reached a compromise: the fixture over Posey's desk stays on, the one over Arredondo's stays off.

Daria Ershova, a 25-year-old marketing consultant, said she hates the big light. At a previous job she brought a lamp to her desk and started what she called an office evolution. "A few of my Gen Z coworkers noticed what I had done, and suddenly we had a whole coalition," she said. Management eventually added a budget for Gen Z staff to buy their own lamps.

The generational pattern does not hold everywhere. Brittany Blackman, 36, a millennial and founder of executive leadership consulting firm Discover Freedom, said she prefers a dark room. She spoke to Business Insider from one, calling it her "happy state." She has brought a lamp to previous office jobs and told clients with bright overheads, "Hey, I'm not winking at you. It's just that the lights really impact me."

Lucia Fuentes, a 28-year-old San Diego-based interior designer, is firmly anti-big light. She said it "washes everything out." Even at her own design studio, she brought in personal lamps. "It was weird too, because my job is literally designing spaces and yet I found myself sitting under something I wouldn't recommend to clients," she said.

Fuentes has watched the TikTok discourse and has practical advice. She does not recommend covering fluorescent tubes with paper towels or other flammable material. The most cost-effective fix, she said, is a small secondhand desk lamp or asking the company to swap the bulbs for warm-white LEDs in the 2700-3000 Kelvin range.

Her larger point: good workplace lighting gives employees options. A mix of natural light, warmer ambient sources, and task lamps beats a single uniform fixture overhead. In shared offices, one person's ideal brightness can be another's headache trigger.