Why do painted walls of saturated complementary colors cause eyestrain when placed close to one another?
It would depend upon the specific complementary-color combinations, but the most likely cause is accommodation changes due to chromatic aberration in your eye. Essentially, different colors are focused at different positions within your eye and your visual system must adjust its focus to view those different colors in optimal sharpness. If you are quickly looking back and forth between two very saturated colors, you are forcing your eyes to change accommodation (focus) rapidly just as if you looked back and forth quickly between near and distant objects. This is tiring and strains your eyes. Another contributor might be changes in chromatic adaptation since your eyes are trying to adapt to the two strong colors in succession. This effect is similar to sitting in a room and flipping the lights on and off repeatedly. That would also strain your eyes.
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