Effects of dark adaptation have large safety implications. This study was aimed to investigate the effects of varying illuminance and the size of critical detail on visual performance (i.e., time-to-detect) in a dark room environment. While adapting to the dark environment, ten subjects were asked to detect and answer simple numerical expressions under 9 experimental conditions (3 illuminance level $ imes$ 3 target size). The ANOVA results revealed that the time-to-detect was significantly affected by both of the illumination level and the size of critical detail. As illumination increased from 10 lux to 20 lux, the time-to-detect was significantly declined. For the size of critical detail, 0.5/min size (i.e., equal to 2 minutes of visual angle) resulted in a shorter time-to-detect, as compared to 0.7/min size (i.e., equal to 1.6 minutes of visual angle). Potential applications of this research include the development of design guidelines for illumination and warning signs in poorly illuminated viewing environments.