> I also have a pretty bright monitor (it's an Apple Thunderbolt Display that I got for a pittance from my old office when they switched to Dell monitors). So t

> I also have a pretty bright monitor (it's an Apple Thunderbolt Display that I got for a pittance from my old office when they switched to Dell monitors). So that may be influencing me towards slightly less contrast. This part of your problem: if you're doing any design work, understand the specification you're designing for. This goes for any photographer, print designer, or web dev. sRGB, bt709, rec2020, and SDR content in rec2100 contexts define the brightness of white as 100 nits, and is generally considered acceptable to be between 100 and 120 (as you often need to offset for ambient lighting to maintain perceptual white). Your perception of both luma and chroma contrast, but also your perception of color itself, changes over the range of brightness your eye can perceive; the organic gamma curve of your eye also changes. Example: sRGB gamma and bt1886 EOTF are intended to be used with content that has a 2.4 gamma and a near-D65 whitepoint at around 100 nits; the same content at "theater darkness" (48 nits) will be encoded with a warmer/yellower white point, at 2.6 gamma, to maintain perceptual similarity. And why is this? The rods (low light vision) and cones (bright light and colors vision) in your eye have different organic gamma curves (incl. each of the three cones have different curves in-of themselves), and the rods do not respond to all visible light equally and have a broad "color" of their own and rods continue to function and influence perception in bright light situations. You can argue, "but Diablo, most people do not calibrate their displays", which is absolutely true; most displays, however, are manufactured with defaults that mimic the intended use of sRGB and bt709 content, and users, left to their own devices, generally will choose a brightness that approximates 100 nits plus an appropriate offset for ambient. However, even for your own personal website, buy a colorimeter, whip out the DisplayCal software, set your profile to "Video (D65, BT1886)" (not "sRGB" due to modern content being mastered entirely for displays manufactured in the past 15 years; BT1886 handles perceptional similarity and better in dark values than sRGB's weirdly defined ramp), and then enjoy being able to author content for a wide range of displays.