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

colors usability readability color-scheme
Nick Berardi picture Nick Berardi · Jul 20, 2009 · Viewed 33.9k times · Source

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?

Answer

Daniel F. Thornton picture Daniel F. Thornton · Jul 20, 2009
  • 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.

Related questions

How to set the text color of TextView in code?

In XML, we can set a text color by the textColor attribute, like android:textColor="#FF0000". But how do I change it by coding? I tried something like: holder.text.setTextColor(R.color.Red); Where holder is just a class …

Read More
Hex transparency in colors

I'm working on implementing a widget transparency option for my app widget although I'm having some trouble getting the hex color values right. Being completely new to hex color transparency I searched around a bit although I couldn't find a …

Read More
Change color of PNG image via CSS?

Given a transparent PNG displaying a simple shape in white, is it possible to somehow change the color of this through CSS? Some kind of overlay or what not?

Read More