Practical Web Design - Fundamentals of Web Design

Background Colours

The operative word here is "background:" something nice and unobtrusive for your text and graphics to sit upon without drawing attention to itself or getting in the way. If you choose a background color, remember that your text has to be readable atop it -- some color choices not only strain the eyes, but challenge the monitor's ability to display colors properly. Black text on a red background sends me for the aspirin bottle (and Aunt Gracie for her stick). Orange text on a pink background works well if you're designing a site for Barbie fans, but not too many others. Psychedelic backgrounds are okay if you think the world revolves around the Grateful Dead, but although I like the band, I don't like the background choice, and neither do most surfers.

If you're using a bordered background (i.e. a relatively thin left-hand column of color that repeats all the way down), that's fine in and of itself, but remember that you don't want your main body of text or your graphics overlapping into the border; furthermore, whatever you put in that border should not only refrain from overlapping itself, it should alos be the proper color to stand out from whatever color choice you've made. If you do decide to use bordered backgrounds, some easy ways to keep things tidy include the use of the <UL> tag to indent your text (don't use the <LI> tag and you won't get bullets or numbers) or the <BLOCKQUOTE> tag, which indents both left and right sides of the text blocks and therefore may not be what you want. Tables are another good way to keep text from creeping over into a border. And, of course, style sheets lets you set the precise amount of indentation -- probably the best way to go.

Do I even need to mention animated backgrounds?

White or light-colored text on black or dark backgrounds can look "sexy" or dramatic, and I've seen some wonderfully done Websites with this scheme, but some surfers have trouble focusing on them. And don't forget that a significant minority of your audience is color-blind (8% of the men and 0.4% of the women who visit your site suffer from one form or another of color-blindness). Safe Web Colours for Colour-Deficient Vision is an excellent source of information, and includes color palettes that simulate several varieties of color-blindness. A related issue is black text on a white background; while this is eminently readable, it can cause eyestrain because of the stark contrast. A dark (but not necessarily black) text on an off-white background can often ease the strain on the visitor's eyes while keeping readability to a maximum even for color-blind or visually limited users.