Light Or Dark Backgrounds

I always enjoy looking at the results of any poll Darren Rowse puts onto his Problogging.net site considering the large reach the site has. In the most recent poll, he asked his readers whether they preferred light or dark backgrounds. Here were the results:

blog-backgrounds-poll-results

Not surprising to me to see that most people preferred light backgrounds but I thought it was interesting that 36% said it depended on the design. I have a little bit of experience in the struggle of light or dark backgrounds. The initial design of WPTavern.com featured a dark color scheme with a dark background. To be honest, it felt like I was looking in a black hole. Quite a few other people didn’t like it as well, especially when they were located in a well lit room. So, I changed the site around to more of a brown color scheme but because of the shades of brown I used, it didn’t turn out well well. Thankfully, I finally stumbled across a color scheme which works and the background doesn’t suck up all the color.

Personally, I prefer light text on a dark background but I know the majority of people prefer black text on white. What do you prefer?

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4 responses to “Light Or Dark Backgrounds”

  1. As an outside-the-box tip, a lot of laptops and monitors offer a simple key-combo for brightness.

    If you don’t like light backgrounds (especially noticed when you’re in a dark room), you can press something like Control-Down (well it’s Function-Down on my laptop), and it dims the screen brightness. This really helps take the edge off light backgrounds, and make them tolerable.

    By the same token if you’re on a dark website, you can possibly increase the brightness (Function-Up on my laptop) to make the letters & words pop out more.

    I hit those keys constantly going from site to site, and going from daytime to nighttime screen viewing. Can’t imagine how some people can stand the same brightness level all the time.

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