Light or dark themes?

Nick · Posted: 9/10/2005, 2:21 pm Post subject:

I think I'd agree with darker skins being "cooler," but also that lighter ones are more functional. That's why I have subBlack and Silver.
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harishankar · Posted: 9/10/2005, 11:56 pm Post subject:

Light, cool colours are excellent and tend to produce good results. Like this one for instance. Warm colours are generally more eyestraining than cool colours.

Dark themes I am somehow not comfortable with. I don't know why, but the feeling it gives me is a restricted, constrained appearance. It's like a bright well-lit room and a dark one. For some things we prefer darker rooms, for others we prefer light, brightly lit rooms.

Same with forums. Light cool, monochromatically themed forums seem best for general purpose forums.
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Jack · Posted: 9/11/2005, 8:51 am Post subject:

I prefer light themes.

I like to visit sites that are easy on the eye. There is nothing worse than going to a site that has dark colors and people use funky colors as their text and it clashes.
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marc · Posted: 9/11/2005, 12:32 pm Post subject:

Thoul · Posted: 9/14/2005, 1:24 pm Post subject:

I used to prefer dark themes with light text - usually black on white, with dark grays for borders. Today, I find that I can't really use sites or programs with very dark backgrounds for an extended period of time. It literally becomes painful for me in some cases.

On the other hand, solid white backgrounds are also not my cup of tea. Off-whites or light grays or blues are best for me. To extend the published book comparison, most books I've read don't have white pages - usually a light brown, either from paper quality or age. It works there, so it can work on my sites, too.

itunes66 · Posted: 9/17/2005, 3:10 pm Post subject:

dark themes

Lady Syren · Posted: 9/19/2005, 4:59 pm Post subject:

My personal preferrence leans more towards the darker colors, however, I do like a few of the lighter themes. When I design a site or forum for someone, I do my best to personalize it to fit the community and/or the people that use it. I like one-of-a-kind designs the most and unfortunately I haven't had time to create one-of-a-kind themes for the phpBB forums I run so I use a few of the free offered themes available.
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Teknomancer · Posted: 9/19/2005, 10:27 pm Post subject:

Light themes... usually in sober blue, somewhat similar to this one. But it really depends on the topic, ex: game sites (medeival themes like Diablo etc), the Black theme suits.

But here is one dark theme which I consider the best I've seen so far. Absolutely flawless in readability and clarity. Excellent indeed.

Planet Unreal. My favourite dark theme.
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Elbethil · Posted: 9/20/2005, 7:43 pm Post subject:

I personally prefer (and design) sites with pastel themes, as I find it's nicer on the eyes. Sometimes they're dark, sometimes they're light - I think it's more important to have something that fits in well with the content of the community.
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Ex0dus · Posted: 9/26/2005, 11:57 am Post subject:

Im a bigger fan of dark themes. I like big contrasts and flashy colors and dark themes ususally give me that. I do appreciate nice light templates though (subsilver/fi subice/this sites modified subsilver being 3 of them). I install both kinds on my site to give everyone a choice. Most of my members stick with light themes.

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