Weekly Website Tip - Lose the Dark Background

I've been asked to share some simple tips that people can use to help with their websites. So naturally I agreed, and decided that I could share a tip every week and maybe people would find it useful.

This week's tip is concerning the background color of your website. I think in our drive to be different, sometimes we make bad decisions and maybe don't even know that it was bad.

I want to address dark (especially black) backgrounds on websites. I'm really not sure why this is still done, but it is. I see a lot of real estate agents using negative high contrast color schemes, meaning light color text on black backgrounds.

There are a couple of problems with this type of theme.

First and foremost, it is taxing on the eyes. After reading, or trying to read, a page or two the users eyes get tired. The effect is similar to looking out a window into bright sunlight and trying to read something. The user may not even identify why they don't like your site, but they just have an unpleasant experience so they leave and never come back. This raises the bounce rate (percentage of visitors who leave the site without clicking through to another page or otherwise engaging the site) and reduces the number of returning visitors the site will see. Both are very bad traits for a real estate agent's website to have.

The second major problem is also related to readability, and in fact, the reason that the idea for this post occurred to me. I was struggling with my own reflection as I was looking at an agent's website which is orange-ish text on a black background and I noticed I was leaning over the armrest of my chair to try and read through her site.

Dark backgrounds on the typical computer monitor act like a mirror. They accentuate the reflection of light. I took a couple of photos to illustrate this effect:

White background, reflection is visible but difficult to see and our eyes will filter the reflection out.

Black background acts like a mirror and our eyes end up focusing on the reflection.