Govee lights are a solid addition to any workspace. They can liven up a room or desk setup while reducing eye strain in today’s world of heavy screen time.
Today we’re going to talk about some placement ideas for your Govee lights, or any accent lights for that matter.
We will touch on important concepts like balancing the eye strain benefits with aesthetics. We’ll also cover both exposed lightbar setups and hidden lightbar setups.
Proper accent light placement at your desk can make a huge difference as we touch on in our ultimate guide to LED backlit desk setups.
If you are thinking about getting some Govee Flow Plus Light Bars, check out our review here first! We also have a setup guide for Govee Light Bar users.
Aesthetic Placement vs. Functional Placement
Before placing your lights, it helps to take a quick minute to think about your main goal with your light bars.
Is it just to try and make your workspace look as appealing as possible? This is a very valid reason. Another more functional goal is light placement specifically to reduce eye strain.
Either way, using RGB light bars around your desk should automatically help with eye strain if they are within your field of view at your desk.
Exactly how much they help will depend on their placement.
The closer the light spread is to your monitors, the better chance they have of helping out your eyes. If you have your lights very far from your monitor, they won’t help with the intensity of a bright monitor.
This is why my personal light bar setup is behind my monitors. Here’s what my desk looks like with my Govee light bars on.
Also, if you are using light bars, they can turn into a much larger light source when you bounce them against a wall.
That’s why I chose to place my own behind my monitor. Look at how large the light source becomes in the image above!
The further away you are from the wall, the larger the beam spread will be.
Now in terms of aesthetics, you have pretty much unlimited freedom!
Just keep in mind that you can also get the benefit of reduced eye strain if you keep lights closeby to your monitor. Ideally, you should strive to balance both functionality and aesthetics.
Hidden Govee Light Setup vs. Exposed Light Setup
There are two more types of light bar setups you should be aware of: exposed vs. hidden light bars.
Exposed light bars are placements where you can intentionally see the back of the light bar. Hidden light bars are those that are behind some other item in your room or workspace.
In the hidden light bar setups, the bars themselves can’t be seen, but the light they emit can be.
So what should you aim for? Hidden or exposed Govee lights?
Exposed Light Bar Considerations
If you are okay with exposed light bars, you will get much more placement flexibility. You won’t have to worry about them being visible or not.
The downside of the exposed light bars is that you get a little visual clutter on your desk. The backside of Govee light bars is not necessarily pretty.
Hidden Light Bar Considerations
With a hidden light bar setup, you are more limited on where you can place your light bars. You need an item on your desk large enough to conceal the bars.
The benefit of these hidden light bar setups is that you get a more minimal desk setup. In our minimal desk setup guide, we talk about how you should free up desk space in any way you can.
I was striving for a minimal desk setup when I hid my monitor light bars behind my monitor.
Overall, it mostly depends on your situation and taste.
For example, if you have a wall-mounted TV with no furniture around, you might have no choice. You pretty much can only mount them behind your TV away from sight.
On the other hand, let’s say you have a large desk that is pretty empty. Two vertically mounted light bars on either side might not look too bad and could fill the empty space nicely.
Popular Govee Light Bar Mounting Ideas
Now let’s get into some of the most popular light bar placement ideas. Use these ideas to inspire your own desk setup lighting!
Mount Light Bars Behind Your Monitor
By far the most popular mounting setup for Govee light bars is keeping them mounted behind your monitor or TV.
This works especially well if you have an empty wall behind your monitor or TV. If you have a window or something, this won’t be a good option.
This is ideal for those looking to reduce eye strain as much as possible. It illuminates the entire wall behind your monitor and blends the monitor’s brightness with the wall.
To mount light bars behind your monitor, you have to use the adhesive back mounts included with your Govee light bars.
Before removing the adhesive protection film, turn on the lights and place them behind your monitor by hand. Ensure you like the light bar placement before you remove the protective film and stick the mounts down.
Lay Light Bars On Table Facing The Wall
If you don’t want to adhere anything to your monitor, another easy way to use the light bars is just to place them on your table.
The Govee lights are shaped like a triangle, which means just setting them on the table gives you a 30-degree angle upwards towards your wall.
This was a nice design touch by Govee. It makes it super easy and realistic to just place it on a table and be an acceptable angle for daily use.
You can see the natural angle of the light bars in the image below when they sit on a desk.
I use this type of mounting for the Govee light bars I have behind my TV. They just sit on my TV stand near the base of the TV.
No mounting hardware is needed for going this route, so it’s a super simple setup.
The only downside with this setup is that these light bars are very lightweight and don’t have any non-slip features around them. That means you will likely have to fix these light bars down yourself, otherwise, they will easily get knocked off your desk.
I would recommend some light-duty double-sided tape for keeping these in place at the back edge of your desk.
Vertical Mounted Facing the Wall
This last setup uses the upright vertical brackets that come with the Govee Light Bars. This setup consists of simply setting up both light bars vertically on either side of your desk or TV.
The included Govee bracket lifts your light bar higher than your desk level so the power cable can escape toward the back of your desk.
This does a particularly good job of illuminating your entire back wall. You get a lot of placement flexibility with this exposed light bar setup.
The further away you place these bars from the wall, the more of the wall they will illuminate. It will be a less intense spread but will cover a larger area.
These mounts have a non-slip base which helps. However, because of how lightweight the light bars are, you will still be able to knock them over relatively easily.
If you find yourself knocking them over, consider using a bit of double-sided tape to keep these in place.
