header and background colours and font - what colours are easiest on the eye? easiest to read? show paintings best?

What colours are easiest to read? which show off my paintings the best? - so it's not just a general preference but related to the work of mine that I'm showing.

Some people find it difficult to read text on a dark background - I find the glare of white tiring - I've been playing with the different templates and though none are quite right, this one still seems to be the best for my work. The white background looked ok but dazzling. The blues killed some of the paintings and the beige and browns didn't work either. A charcoal grey might be nice but I don't know quite how to do it!


What do you think?

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Comments

Billie Crain said…
i think you already know what i'll say...love the black bg! it never competes with the work and my eye goes straight to the painting.
6:32 pm
Billie Crain said…
i forgot to mention...the text below the title on that beautiful header is difficult to read. i think you may need to use a color with more contrast.
6:35 pm
Sarah said…
Like the new banner, like the dark background too. Think Norton is v difficult too, hope all is worked out.
7:54 pm
Robyn Sinclair said…
Vivien, I think your new banner is really beautiful but unfortunately I can't read all the text - the colour gets lost.

I think charcoal grey would be wonderful as a painting background colour. Afraid I have no idea how to do that though. I'm sure someone will arrive to help. Meanwhile that black looks very smart.

That young Sam is so cute! A baby wetsuit! What next?:
8:51 am
Shirley Anne Sherris said…
Hi
I had great difficulty deciding on a colour for my website and after a lot of teating of different colours finall decided to go for the white so it din't influence the colours of the pieces. However any pieces that didn't look good on the white I gave a solid black frame. Blue print on white is less tiring than black print on white. A dark sepia on white is also more restful.
Text on black is hard to read. I use yellow or green rather than white text.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
SAS
11:37 am
vivien said…
what next? is exactly what I thought about baby wetsuits! can't you just see him wobbling on a surf board!

I can't alter the colour of the text in the banner :( blogger doesn't let me do enough editing

so far ... so good with the Norton. I have to say their free online 24/7 analysts are wonderful with help - mine fixed it by remote control (forget the proper term for it!)
6:53 pm
caseytoussaint said…
I think your work shows up beautifully against the black background. It's true that light text on a dark background can be had on the eye, but here the really important thing is your work. I post my stuff on 2 different blogs and the black background always seems to work best. I love your new banner as well.
4:08 pm
vivien said…
thanks Casey :)
4:49 pm
sharon young said…
Great new banner, Vivien , maybe it's enough with just the main header if you can't change the sub text colour.
I've always thought your work looks great on black it seems to suit your style very well.
What a lovely sketch of Sam and the wet suite is amazing!!
I had the same trouble as you with McAffee virus software when I had a PC for a short while. I have a Mac now and you don't really need virus software as 99% of viruses are aimed at Microsoft.
8:08 pm
Billie Crain said…
Vivien, i created my header with Elements and Irfanview. i had unlimited fonts and colors to choose from. i made it into a Jpeg file and played with the size until it fit my template. you have PSP, don't you?. just a thought.......
8:14 pm
vivien said…
thanks for the ideas Billie and Sharon

the trouble is that google reads the subtext and if I do it in PS it can't :( I phrased it specially for the search engines.

I'm going to have to keep thinking ...........

any other solutions welcome!
11:10 pm
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