If white on black text causes any eye strain at all then you need to adjust your monitor, not make the text gray.
vedmakk•6h ago
Dimming the monitor just turns white into gray globally. It lowers overall luminance, but doesn't fix the relative contrast or the perceptual glare caused by high-contrast elements like pure white on pure black.
In fact, even at lower brightness, bright-on-dark can still cause halation, retinal fatigue, and visual vibration, especially in low-light environments.
Designing softer contrasts does the same thing, but more intentionally - and we can't assume users have ideal screen settings. Better to design for humans, not hardware.
Also: white-on-black is just one example.
db48x•5h ago
Contrast does not cause fatigue or eye strain. Brightness does. If your monitor is hurting your eyes, turn it down. Don’t rely on a designer to use gray text so that it doesn’t hurt your eyes, adjust the brightness directly to the level that is comfortable for you.
vedmakk•5h ago
Eye strain has many causes - brightness plays a role among other factors as described. If a design requires users to tweak their monitor to feel okay, it's not a good design.
db48x•6h ago
vedmakk•6h ago
In fact, even at lower brightness, bright-on-dark can still cause halation, retinal fatigue, and visual vibration, especially in low-light environments.
Designing softer contrasts does the same thing, but more intentionally - and we can't assume users have ideal screen settings. Better to design for humans, not hardware.
Also: white-on-black is just one example.
db48x•5h ago
vedmakk•5h ago