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I was doing my usual morning search at Google News for real estate items when I stumbled on an investing blog hosted at Blogger and now I'm seeing spots! While the content of this blog - The Millionaires Blog is interesting and worth grabbing the RSS feed, the layout of his blog is awful on the eyes. The Millionaire's Blog has a 100% black background with white text - and while this format may capture attention for its' uniqueness in a world stuffed with white backgrounds, the content is difficult for the eyes to adjust to and once I left to view another site with a typical white background, my eyes were burning and seeing black horizontal lines.
If you ever remember as a kid, staring at one of those checkerboards and then looking at a white wall so you could "trick" your eyes into showing the negative "shadow" of the checkerboard - it was fun as a kid, but as an adult it's a bit painful. So, I decided to do some research and see what some experts have to say about designing a site with "positive contrast" (black text on white background) as opposed to "negative contrast" (white text on black background" and found: "Most studies have shown that dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characterson a light background." - Reference: Bauer, D., & Cavonius, C., R. (1980). Improving the legibility of visual display units through contrast reversal. In E. Grandjean, E. Vigliani (Eds.), Ergonomic Aspects of Visual Display Terminals (pp. 137-142).London: Taylor & Francis However, I also found this: "Reading experience along with halation (the tendency of white characters or text to "glow" when presented on a black background) may account for the beneficial influence of negative contrast." - Reference: Influences of Contrast Sensitivity on Text Readability in the Context of a Graphical User Interface Benjamin A. Parker Dr. Lauren F. V. Scharff Stephen F. Austin State University So, experts are split but in my personal opinion, due to the fact that so many websites aren't designed with negative contrast, the transition to and from a site that does have it is far too jarring for the eyes and might discourage a visitor from returning. {josquote}In addition, websites with black backgrounds are more often found in less businesslike settings such as gaming and social type websites and thus might be perceived as less professional overall. {/josquote} My suggestion to the real estate agent that is firmly resolved to use a black background (especially you Century 21 agents) - you might want to consider utilizing black or even deep gray or browns only on the header and/or column sections of your website or blog - and keep the main body content as white or a very light color to ensure readability.
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