I’m trying to definitively calibrate my monitor with DisplayCal and The Lagom LCD monitor test pages but have come to realize I’m not sure when in the calibration process to use the pages or wait for DisplayCal profiling to achieve the most accuracy.

The contrast page is good example- I know the factory default is supposed to be correct but I’m losing “steps” on the color scale past 28. Following the page’s suggestion, I used DisplayCal to achieve a 6500k color temp before altering contrast but after doing so the color temp changed, leaving me to wonder if I would have to re-adjust it back after finding the correct contrast before continuing on with DisplayCal. Though I have yet to use the gamma calibration page, I can forsee I will face the same situation. Managed to get the sharpness right, at least.