Abstract: The present study investigated the effects of surrounding illumination on visual comfort and fatigue while viewing television. Nine subjects aged 32 to 52 years (mean: 40, standard deviation: 6.8) watched a single 60-min block of film footage with the surrounding illumination and a 60-min block without it. Event related potentials, reaction times to stimuli presented on the television screen, eye blink frequency and subjective ratings of general and visual comfort were used as indices of fatigue and eyestrain. Consistent with earlier published literature on luminance ratios and visual comfort, the surrounding illumination appeared to provide a small improvement in several of these measures.