Change blue displays to yellow/amber easily and cheap

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 25/02/2023

A cheap and easy way to change a blue LCD or OLED display to yellow/amber using Kapton tape.

I don't like blue displays. I never have done. I have always found them to be harsh on the eyes, especially in dark environments. I also find them more difficult to read than green or yellow displays. Blue is a colour that is rarely found in nature. It really was a colour that was/is quite unnatural to the eyes until recent times. It reduces melatonin release into the body and can affect sleep.

I discovered some years back that Kapton tape can change blue displays into yellow/amber just by simply sticking some over the display. The first one I modified was my GC10 Geiger counter. I covered the display with a layer of Kapton tape and it changed into a kind of sickly yellow/green colour, akin to that of Uranium. Quite fitting for it's purpose!

Step 1 - Get Kapton tape.
Step 2 - Stick some on a display.

Here are some examples of using multiple layers to change the colour. The colour rendition from the camera isn't good in the pictures and in reality they are quite more yellow.

This is the original blue:

This is one layer of tape:

Two layers:

Three layers:

This is the original blue OLED:

And this is using two layers of tape. The colour rendition in the small blurry example below is much closer to what it looks like in reality:

This is the original blue LCD.

This is my modified LCD with one layer of tape.

It is well worth experimenting and could possibly be used for changing the colour of other displays or indicators. I do think the old original green LCD (below) is better looking than the blue, and getting kind of vintage looking these days.