What’s one of my biggest web design pet peeves? It has to be the white text on a black background color scheme. This particular color scheme appears to be especially popular with artists (photographers particularly) because of the way that black makes images of artwork appear to “pop” off the screen. But while you’re trying to make your artwork “pop”, you’re also giving your visitors a headache.
Reversed color text is one of the hardest color schemes to read from. While it can be okay in tiny, tiny doses, an entire website or blog with this color scheme is very hard on the eyes…and you certainly don’t want to make anything hard on your visitors. Plus, the fact that this color scheme plays havoc when you’re trying to print and with people that are visually impaired.
The best color scheme for text on your website is the good old fashioned black text on a white background. Open up a magazine, a book, a newspaper, and what color scheme do you see for reading? Black text on a white background. It’s rare for you see more than a paragraph or two in a different color scheme and it’s like that for a reason. Readability.
If your website or blog uses this color scheme, change it as quickly as possible. Your visitors will thank you for it.
Do you have a website design “pet peeve”? Leave a comment and let me know!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
White text on black is pretty horrific. With web sites, I find pure black text on white to be a bit harsh, too, and tend to use a milder hue (eg, background color at #f0f0f8 and text at #333)–but now I’m just a babbling geek. =)
My other pet peeve is autoplay music/sound/video on a web site. When browsing the web, it’s also likely I’m listening to a webradio station or iTunes or having a conversation on Skype–ie, I’m already using my speakers and have them set at a volume suitable for whatever that purpose is. So, when I go to a new web site and am suddenly hit with an autoplay YouTube video or background music, I just shut that window/tab. I do the same for web sites that have an audible greeting (like Crafty Nation used to). From the perspective of the person who made the “offending” site, this should be considered a pretty strong loss, since I didn’t even give their content a chance before being driven away.
While I mostly agree with this, I have to argue this point:
“Open up a magazine, a book, a newspaper, and what color scheme do you see for reading? Black text on a white background.”
Black on white is good when that white is from reflected light, not a back-lit screen.
What about the good-old fashioned school blackboard?
The web is also a different medium than print. Because it works well in the printing world we can’t assume it will work equally well in the web world.
Just my two cents