light foreground on dark background vs. dark foreground on light background [LWN.net]

light foreground on dark background vs. dark foreground on light background

Posted Jun 6, 2007 13:47 UTC (Wed) by zooko (subscriber, #2589)
In reply to: Very 1990s by coriordan
Parent article: Emacs 22.1 released

There's no arguing about aesthetic taste, of course, but you should know that on modern LCD displays, using dark text on a light background allows people to catch about four thirds as many errors in a text as using light text on a dark background.

http://www.psycho.uni-duesseldorf.de/abteilungen/aap/Doku...

Certainly back when we used CRTs a dark background was easier on the eyes, because CRTs flicker, and more/brighter area exacerbates that problem.

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light foreground on dark background vs. dark foreground on light background

Posted Jun 6, 2007 13:54 UTC (Wed) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]

P.S. See page 39 of

http://www.psycho.uni-duesseldorf.de/abteilungen/aap/Doku...

for the basic result -- you can catch about a third more errors in a proofreading task with light-on-dark than with dark-on-light. It is a very well designed and well executed study, so I have confidence in the result.

Thanks, I'll look for longevity

Posted Jun 7, 2007 12:03 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Thanks for that link, I'll give it a read.

But my main concern is what state my eyes will be after 30 years of staring at a white screen or a black screen. If you know any info about that, I'd be glad to hear it.

I have no good evidence to go on, so I just guess that since staring at a light buld makes your eyes sore quickly, and staring at a white LCD is more similar to staring at a light bulb than staring at a black LCD is, the black is probably better.

page 41 has graphs but I'm nore sure I can read them

Posted Jun 7, 2007 13:53 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Page 41 of that document has graphs which talk about eyestrain, but I'm not used to reading graphs like those.

550 lx is the reading when the work was done in a room with the lights on, and 5 lx is the reading when the work was done in a room with the lights off. I guess the y-axis scales, from 0 to 20, with 20 being high levels of eyestrain. The light grey (positive) is using a bright background, and the dark grey (negative) is with a dark background.

So, have I read correctly that that study is saying that eyestrain is worse when using light text on a dark background?

page 41 has graphs but I'm nore sure I can read them

Posted Jun 7, 2007 15:43 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

I'm not sure what the study says, but if you're in a relatively dark environment, my intuition says that your pupils will be more stopped down with the bright screen (white background), and therefore have more depth of field, making it easier to focus, and thus less eyestrain. Of course if you're starting to have cataracts, you'll have more glare from the bright screen. But hopefully you don't have to deal with that. :)