What is the best color combination for readability, easy of use, and reduced eye strain? [closed]

Question

I am trying to pick out the optimal set of colors for a new website project.

I want to do a traditional black on white look and feel for the main content. However my partner on the project wants to do a color combination that more looks like the traditional Windows Forms look and feel.

Is there any research available on the best color combination's to use for readability, ease of use, and reduced eye strain?

Carlynne

No matter what colours you choose, I would recommend that you implement something to make them changeable, whether that be a user interface, or just a note in a config file, make sure that it's not impossible to change. You might find that your user base enjoys pastels FAR more than the average person. Or that they're offended by the colour maroon. Always be able to change your colour scheme. – Earley

This is programming related and this belongs here. Color schemes are part of usability and human-computer interaction, which is part of software engineering, and topics of software engineering have a direct impact on software development. – Hindsight

Agreed, user interaction is definitely within the programming scope of topics. – Holmen

@Thomas and Danny: Agreed! Why'd this get closed? – Modulator

Belongs in ux.stackexchange.com – Copolymer

This is a really good question, but the question will probably have to be migrated to [ux.stackexchange](ux.stackexchange.com). – Acolyte

As a warning, the moderators on stackoverflow mostly like questions of a particular type. For example, "here is a small amount of code, and a short error message. What caused the error message and how do I fix it?" Questions with no-code at all and no error message are sometimes closed or marked as off topic. I recommend asking questions about visuals and color schemes on ux.se. our question about color schemes has to do with "UX" where UX stands for "user experience". – Acolyte

Answer 1

• Here are some tips and a study on color-scheming for the color-blind or visually impaired.
• If you want to use complementary colors, or more than two colors, here are some good guidelines [pdf].
• Here are some tools from the NIST to automatically evaluate website usability.

And if the above just will not do, this page has more useful Links than the entire Zelda series.

Modulator

Ironically, those links makes my eyes hurt :) – Hedonics

I guess they want you to go through it so your readers don't have to :P – Modulator

@Meeh is right; that last link in particular is atrocious. The fact that it's about user interface design and usability is fantastically ironic. – Monophonic

+1 for legend of Zelda reference. – Capriccio

Some of the webpages you provided hyperlinks for are now defunct. internotredici.com and jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp are not valid web-addresses anymore. Next time, instead of providing a link to the page, I recommend putting the content directly in your stack overflow answer. I recommend copying and pasting a handful of your favorite sentences from the webpage into your stack overflow post as formatting as a block quote with an attribution at the bottom of the block quote. – Acolyte

Answer 2

I would recommend Kuler to find which color scheme to use on your site. If you search for "Windows" on that site you will get some windows schemes that you might want to use.... generally speaking from a marketing aspect, white backgrounds tend to be more accepted than backgrounds with a specific color.

Practise

Answer 3

You might also consider using a color matcher ,

I use it and find it very helpful to find complementary color that make your text readable and you design make sense.

Sport

Answer 4

White strains my eyes really badly I find.

When it comes to vast amounts of text I typically prefer black on off-white. Some very light shade of gray. Still plenty easy to read, but not burning my retinas.

Slambang

+1 I find black on white to be quite an eyestrain, too. It's like looking at snow in bright sunshine. I tend to tone down the background to a medium shade of grey. In my IDEs, I use a black background with mostly mid shade colours for the text. – Bloomery

Answer 5

You can always check your decisions to make sure they are ADA compliant. This is a good place to start

Labyrinthodont

Answer 6

Black text on an off white background works for me. And no background image or color on the desktop

Hesketh

Answer 7

I read about a study that concluded that the readability of a particular color scheme is dependent on the subject's personality. In fact, it was found that some people with a reading disability were instantly able to read faster once a color filter was placed over the pages on a book. I suggest you pick a color scheme that you find easiest on the eyes, and make the font a reasonable size. Something to avoid is the color yellow. The same study found that yellow is a generally irritating color to most people, so even if you find it easy on the eyes, your audience might not. Some people find darker backgrounds easier on the eyes, but if your audience isn't already using their own color scheme, your site will be seen a nuisance, since most of the web is dark-on-light.

Polygynous

Answer 8

Windows Forms look will only keep visitors who like that look. So say goodbye to all the Mac, Linux, and other Windows haters.

Personally, I prefer black on white.

Gnosticize

Answer 9

There aresome resources out there that explain the topic.

As a rule, you should avoid black background with white text, it's anoying to a lot of people.

Angelesangelfish

Answer 10

in the past I liked vert much turbo pascal 7 default color scheme: yellow on blue. I'm not sure about it's scientific relevance however I think it is better than black on white.

Recycle

Answer 11

I personaly use C0DCC0 (greenish) instead of white for background color in windows. Easy on the eyes when you have to stare at the screen whole day. Consider this to be one datasample study :).

(Imagine my disgust at OSX with fixed colors...)

Tael