soothing color combination for reading?

Question

Today, my professor was saying that writing with black ink on white board is the 'sixth' most soothing combination of colour for eyes. The first most soothing combination for eyes is Black writing on yellow background. Is that true. Please mention any scientific explanations/researches and the complete list of the combination of colours

Answer 1

I'm afraid that there is no one list of most "readable" color combinations. The matter is completely up for debate, and with new enthusiasm in the world of colorful web pages. Your professor must have been citing just one particular study.

Remember that the most important aspect of readability in color is contrast. The less contrast there is between the colors, the more our brain interprets them as "equals" or as blended together. One of the source pages cites a study where readers of dark text on a light background were 26% more accurate than those who read light text on a dark background. While lack of contrast is only fatiguing to some readers, to others, including elderly readers and those with vision problems, it can make reading a simple document impossible.

Because of this need for contrast, it is black on white text that is easiest to interpret for most readers. Black on white is followed by similar combinations with slight hue variants, such as dark blue on white, and black on light gray or light yellow. Colors that have low contrast and/or high saturation are not as readable, in the sense that they "create visual fatigue and make it difficult to focus on the text." Some less effective combinations listed include green on yellow, white on fuchsia, red on green and fuchsia on blue.

Wavelengths must also be taken into account. Short wavelengths, such as the blue color family, have a lower resolution because "they are blurred by the ocular media, and there is low sampling to the cone mosiac." In other words, our eyes don't pick up short wavelength colors the way they can long ones, like the reds. So because it's the text shapes that we must interpret and not the space around it, blue on white is not quite as effective as white on blue, or red on white.

I took the following list from one of the source graphs. Remember that this is just from one study, and only the top few combinations, highest readability first:

Black on White
Black on Gray
Blue on White
White on Black
Black on Yellow
White on Blue
Red on White
Gray on White

Also keep in mind that people with vision problems, interpretation disorders like dyslexia, and even those of us with chromographic synaesthesia (seeing color where others only see plain letters) all see textual color combinations differently, so there could never be a list that everyone agreed on.

Hope this helps! :)