Choosing background and foreground colors for web pages and web sites

To wit, foreground and background colors should be contrasting.

A cool factor of your web site should not turn you away from this basic and obvious tip. Remember, it's easy for your visitors to press the back button on their browsers.

Use a contrasting color combination for the page background and the foreground text. Avoid bright colors (they give me a headache... it takes me about 3 seconds to understand this and press the back button) as backgrounds rather use subtle pastel shades. Also make it a point to test the colors of links, visited links and active links.

A useful color combination

A color combination to avoid

Try to test the clarity of your foreground text. View your page from a distance of 3 feet. If the text is readable use the color combination. Furthermore, test your color combinations in monitors using lower color depths to make assurance doubly sure.