

User Motivation Determines the Best Color Scheme for Your Website - chewxy
http://kaikkonendesign.fi/user-motivation-determines-the-best-color-scheme-for-your-website/

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DustinCalim
I don't agree with Hedonism being the driving force behind dark websites. I
prefer dark(and spend all day coding with a dark background) because it's
easier on my eyes... The idea behind skeuomorphism in webpages mimicking paper
has proven itself when the print industry attempted to carry their print
practices over to the web and failed. The internet is still very young; I
think what we will find over time as more and more people spend more and more
time on computers is a departure from paperesque websites to a more functional
design that is dark and physiologically friendly(easy on your eyes).

Interestingly enough, the website in the link looks awesome using the Hacker
Vision Chrome extension I use which is designed to do just that - it applies a
dark theme to all websites so the bright white backgrounds don't destroy your
eyes.

Download Hacker Vision at: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-
vision/fomm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-
vision/fommidcneendjonelhhhkmoekeicedej)

~~~
shousper
This seems very unnatural. Step outside on a sunny day and tell me we're not
built (as a species) to function optimally in bright light.

I'd even go so far as to say that several hundred thousand years of evolution
would back me up. Otherwise, why can't we see perfectly in the dark?

EDIT: typo.

~~~
DustinCalim
We aren't equipped to see perfectly in light or dark, we have a range.
Everyday is sunny here and people wear sunglasses. I'm not disagreeing with
you though - I think the difference is that monitors are backlit and things in
nature that create light you tend to not look directly at for 8 hours a day.

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iota
The fight against "default" white seems analogous to Ian Storm Taylor's
recommendation to never use black (<http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-
never-use-black/>). I prefer off white (e.g., #f9fafc) because of the same
reason I like text color set at #333 — it looks softer, but still almost
imperceptibly different from #fff/#000's traditional "paper and ink"
aesthetic.

<http://www.colorcodehex.com/f9fafc/>

<http://www.colorcodehex.com/333333/>

~~~
bravura
I believe in using a black background for talk slides.

Example:
[http://new.livestream.com/gigaom/gigaomroadmap/videos/579403...](http://new.livestream.com/gigaom/gigaomroadmap/videos/5794034)

I would prefer dark gray from an aesthetic perspective. But the reason I
choose black is simple:

Often, the LCD projector is not pointed straight at the backdrop or maximized
correctly. If your slide background is not black, there is a perceptible
margin, and your slide area is shaped like a trapezoid, not a rectangle. Using
a black slide background minimizes this margin, and makes it look like your
slides correctly fill the backdrop.

Just my two cents. I'm curious if people feel strongly against this approach.

~~~
statusgraph
White on black is very hard to see in a brightly lit room. Many programming
talks like that color scheme and it just doesn't work with crappy projectors.

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MrScruff
I force all sites to display as something like #E0 on #28. I find it far
easier on my eyes. I use a Firefox extension that lets me switch back to the
original scheme with a shortcut for the few sites that don't function when you
override the colours.

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olgeni
> Why the Web is White

"And what happens if the Twitter mob finds out..."

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shasta
Author: Search for "pleasuraigh".

~~~
yuchi
The article was pretty, but too many typos in it to count...

EDIT to --> too

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melling
You mean 'too many' and not 'to many', right?

~~~
yuchi
Of course..

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kintamanimatt
I wonder if these color schemes are chosen primarily because it's what's
traditional and expected; we don't like to surprise our users/customers as it
may induce negative feelings, including a lack of trust. For example, we
expect a fashion website to look different to a web app, and when something is
discordant with our preconceived notions we trust it less. I think that
typically designers intuitively go for a less-surprising aesthetic rather than
an atypical one whose aesthetic induces a degree of trust-eroding cognitive
dissonance.

The one utilitarian site I can think of that breaks the author's pattern is
Wufoo; bold colors, utilitarian purpose. They seem to be quite successful too.
Having said that, a single counterexample doesn't diminish the validity of the
author's central thesis, but it might just be one notch in the larger key.

~~~
chewxy
I don't disagree that designers choose a less threatening aesthetics that
incorporates familiarity. Pandering to the lowest common denominator
eventually leads to the most familiar of features - GOOG is just a box and two
buttons, for example.

I would also argue that the Formerly-Known-As-MetroUI pattern is also rather
utilitarian. It was designed to have a low information density, but highly
relevant information - that is to say, show less, but show higher quality
information.

Too bad people have constantly misused those great ideas in patterns tho

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lucian1900
Because of the historical accident of paper being white and ink being dark.
The human eye is somewhat better at reading light-on-dark, but most people
aren't used to it.

~~~
majormajor
But there's also the historical accident of early computers primarily using
light-on-dark displays (I always found amber-on-black mode less harsh on the
eyes than green-on-black, personally—but just don't get me started on white-
on-blue, bah!), which we then moved away from in favor of dark on light.

(If I had to guess the reason for _that_ historical accident, I'd think it had
to do with "white" not being a particularly uniform color on a lot of older
CRTs, but one with varying hue and intensity in different regions.)

I find light on dark hard to read, even in low light. If I'm reading on my
phone at night and use light-on-dark, the text looks blurrier to me than if I
change it to dark-on-light (where "light" is a shade of gray that isn't harsh
in a dark room).

(I wonder if dark ink on white paper took off over white ink/paint/whatever on
dark paper because most people found it more readable. Anyone know about the
history of paper/inks/paints?)

~~~
hollerith
>If I had to guess the reason for that historical accident, I'd think it had
to do with "white" not being a particularly uniform color on a lot of older
CRTs, but one with varying hue and intensity in different regions.

also, the earlier monitors flickered more than later ones, and the flicker was
more troublesome when the default/background color was light.

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nviennot
One must take in consideration the environment of their users.

Try to look at a white screen while being in dark place. It hurts.

~~~
eru
Use redshift or flu.x or so.

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StavrosK
I use redshift religiously.

Hint: install it during the day. Not having it will hurt after a few days.

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cool-RR
It makes me incredibly sad that people are willing to stare straight ahead at
a fucking lightbulb (a.k.a. sites with a white background) and destroy their
vision.

~~~
yuchi
There's a lot to discuss here. I personally cannot read through light-on-dark
digital designs. After a few lines everything blurs. With dark-on-light on the
opposite I can read for hours.

Most probably is due to a non-optimal screen both at home and work-place, but
I suffer from the same issue even on 2010 iMacs.

But the most pleasant scheme for me (I mean, my eyes) is light-gray-on-dark-
gray.

~~~
chewxy
It's the contrast between the text/content and the background that affects
your comfort though. There was an article about how you should never use black
for your text on a white bg[0]. I think the points there are rather salient.

In fact the W3C has a good calculator for colour contrast [1], which I think
is a good guide for calculating colour contrast when designing sites

[0]<http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/>
[1]<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#contrast-ratiodef>

~~~
kyberias
I think there are no points in [0] what so ever to support the claim than one
should not use black (#000). The author does not argue at all. All he does is
present a photo he has taken which does not have black pixels. What the hell
is that supposed to prove?

~~~
yuchi
I should redirect you to the interesting discussion happened on Ian's article
here on HN.

About eye stress.. that's another story. Could anyone here point us to a
__scientific __paper out there?

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aristus
Utter bullshit. The original background color of websites was #c0c0c0, the
same default color grey used in desktop apps. It was a big to-do, switching
that default. The reason most sites are blue is because the human eye is
better able to distinguish shades of blue. Also, a significant % of people are
red/green colorblind.

~~~
tzs
> The reason most sites are blue is because the human eye is better able to
> distinguish shades of blue.

Huh? It's shades of yellow/green that we are best able to distinguish. We're
not good at blue.

~~~
HCIdivision17
Yup. Mind, color is _really_ complicated. The math to calculate color spaces
is completely non-obvious, the eye's reactions to colors is subtle, and the
brain seems to interpret colors in interesting ways. (I remember at work, we
needed to figure out why a thing was getting _more_ red as we shifted it into
the blue spectrum... turns out that's why they call it ultraviolet.)

I'll refer to a cool demonstration of this in action:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891753>

It's not scientific, but it's certainly telling.

TL;DR: Green is the color we see well.

