What should you know about brown eyes and light sensitivity?

The amount of pigment in the iris can influence how bright light feels, but eye colour does not explain every episode of photophobia. Dryness, surface irritation, contact lenses, inflammation, and conjunctivitis can make light uncomfortable. Migraine may cause light sensitivity with headache, nausea, visual symptoms, or sound sensitivity. Rarely, meningitis can cause severe headache, fever, neck stiffness, confusion, or marked sensitivity to light. The timing, one-sided symptoms, pain, and changes in vision help clinicians decide how urgently to examine you.

Move to softer, indirect lighting and use sunglasses outdoors without wearing them continuously indoors. Rest your eyes, reduce screen glare, and avoid rubbing them. Remove contact lenses if they feel irritating. Note whether symptoms follow poor sleep, glare, a headache, a new medicine, or an eye exposure. Book an eye or medical review when sensitivity is new, persistent, recurrent, or affecting normal activities; do not self-treat a painful red eye with someone else’s drops.

Seek urgent help for sudden severe eye pain, reduced vision, a red eye with intense light sensitivity, injury, chemical exposure, or a severe headache with vomiting. Emergency assessment is needed for fever with neck stiffness, confusion, a rash, or rapidly worsening illness. A sudden change in one eye should be checked promptly even if the other eye feels normal.

Ask whether the sensitivity is coming from the eye surface, migraine, or another cause, whether your lenses or medicines contribute, and which changes require emergency assessment.