3 ms·
From my limited exposure to designers, I've learned that they think lower contrast strains reader's eyes less than high contrast does. Black on white is thought
by Swizec 10y ago
From my limited exposure to designers, I've learned that they think lower contrast strains reader's eyes less than high contrast does. Black on white is thought to be too striking to read comfortably.
Here is a post from 2012 explaining why it's important to use a dark grey instead of a pure black: https://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black https://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black
And I agree. Pure black often looks bad.
Light gray is even worse.
- pc86 10y ago> Black on white is thought to be too striking to read comfortably. It is, but (very) dark gray text on a (very) dark gray background is fine. This light gray on white thing is just nonsense.
- FreezerburnV 10y agoFair enough! But if webpages that did "black on white"-style text, like a book, and just emulated what books look like, (not-really black text and not-really white background) I'd be 100% ok with that. Modifying a webpage to not have light gray text is much easier to type "0" for the color than to type out an exact, least-eye-strain gray. I'd much prefer if designers put in the least-eye-strain gray for me :)
- sharkjacobs 10y agoI wonder if this rule of thumb will change when OLEDs are most common displays. It seems like it might be worth taking advantage of OLEDs ability to do unlit black.
- discreditable 10y agoI like this characteristic of OLEDs. When I'm reading a book on my phone in low light I like to set the background to black and text to white. It significantly lowers the light output of the screen in that scenario compared to a traditional LCD. That factor alone made me prefer my Galaxy S5 over my gen1 kindle fire for reading despite the screen size.
- ciaranm 10y agoI can add my anec-data: I find it really hard to read white text on any dark background, black being obviously the worst. I also find pure white with pure black really straining on my eyes. I hate the trails of lines I get reading bright text on dark backgrounds, or with really high-contrast colours generally. Like the parent(or grandparent?), I've edited CSS for web pages. I've got a chrome extension called change colors installed, which has shortcuts for override-colours-by-domain and on-this-page-only. Really handy.