Categories

Archives
«  
  »

Web background: black or white

I decided to make this new site with black background and light-grey text, mainly for the three following reasons:

  1. Readability: Most websites’ background is in white color, which for me is a bit painful to read after a long period.
  2. Energy consumption: Monitors may use less energy to display a dark-background website than it does for a white-background one
  3. Photos: They may look better on dark background than white background (of course, neutral grey is the best, but i don’t want a grey)

A quick search shows that the 1st point is debatable, and the 2nd assumption is no longer valid.

  1. Readability: Most says that they’re more comfortable with black text on white background, though no concrete and updated study is shown yet (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum116/48.htm)
  2. Energy consumption: “…LCDs, on the other hand, are absorptive displays. That is, an LCD display includes a backlight which is always on. The backlight is white, so rendering a white pixel requires no additional energy input. To render a black pixel, however, all three color channel subpixels have to be “opaqued” by applying an electrical potential to the liquid crystal phase. Put simply, CRTs spend more energy to make white, while LCDs spend more energy to make black. Or at least, that’s how it seemed like it should be to me. And since almost everyone these days uses LCDs instead of CRTs, www.blackle.com may actually be doing more harm than good.” (from Sean’s page).

    3. Similar conclusion is given by Daren with test results from 24 monitors for Australia PC User in July 2009. At 100% brightness level, black screen monitors consume 44.05W on average (per hour??), and white screen ones consume 43.07W (about 3.16% lesser). However, the test results also suggested that reducing the brightness level from 100% to 70% can lead to a 20% drop in power consumption. I normally set it at 50-60%, and all are well.

GD Star Rating
loading…

Related posts:

  1. Diary softwares
  2. The last day
2009 Oct 26, Mon | Category: Uncategorized | Print Print
    «  
      »