Looking for a good programming color scheme.

December 5, 2006 8:17 AM

What is the best programming color scheme for my eyes?

Dark or light background? High or low contrast colors? I'm using emacs, putty and programming in php, if that helps.

posted by hooray to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

I've always thought that green or white text on a black background is easiest to see, but I don't have any scientific literature I can give you as a reference.
posted by cmonkey at 8:32 AM on December 5, 2006

Oh, and by way of 'colour schemes', turn on syntax highlighting.
posted by cmonkey at 8:35 AM on December 5, 2006

White (or off-white) on black makes a surprising difference compared to black on white. Seems both easier to read and easier on the eyes. FWIW, the color scheme I used is a slightly modified version of Vibrant Ink. The biggest change I made was to make the highlighted text color higher contrast on my monitor.
posted by Hildago at 8:40 AM on December 5, 2006

I always set VI to use green on black. In addition to looking old school, the issue on old tube monitors was that the three guns were often not aligned, so monochrome text in red, green or blue was sharpest. And the human eye is most responsive to green, so green was the best choice.

If you have an LCD where the pixels are always perfectly aligned, black-on-white with sub-pixel anti-aliasing (MS ClearType) is my preference. The only problem with that is that you can't duplicate ClearType anti-aliasing on Photoshop, so it's difficult to make screen mockups using screen caps. if you have ClearType turned on, it doesn't work well with green-on-black because it can't use the pixel elements as effectively as with white & black. So I stick to B&W on LCDs.
posted by GuyZero at 8:56 AM on December 5, 2006

Response by poster: Ah, I forgot to add that I have syntax highlighting on.
posted by hooray at 8:59 AM on December 5, 2006

A former coworker turned me on to using a sort of ochre-ish yellow for text over a dark greenish-blue background. It sounds awful, but it makes my eyes feel enormously better than the standard black-on-white scheme. Navy blue, purple, and white then get used for other syntax elements.
posted by vytae at 9:03 AM on December 5, 2006

I was once told that you should to try and adjust your screen brightness so that the white matches that of a sheet of white paper. My putty windows are all colours of the rainbow to help identify the server I'm working on, but my main vi scheme is black on pale grey, which is a huge amount easier on the eye than black on white.
posted by corvine at 9:28 AM on December 5, 2006

I find light colours on blue a bit easier on the eyes than white on black (and black on white is an abomination). I've used a background of #003166 with text defaulting to #a8a8a8 for terminal sessions for quite a while, but I'm quite partial to #103040/#bcbcbc atm; looks something like the ocean deep vim colour scheme.
posted by Freaky at 9:35 AM on December 5, 2006

456 Berea Street has a post on Light text on dark background vs. readability; this comment has links to some relevant research.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:46 AM on December 5, 2006

At work I use a black background and white/grey text. I have the monitors brightness turned down a fair bit. It's easiest on the eyes I find. White backgrounds are just too bright. You then just need to pick syntax highlight colours that are also legible.
posted by chunking express at 10:25 AM on December 5, 2006

For me, color scheme doesn't matter - it's all about the contrast and the brightness. Turn the brightness down to zero. Turn the contrast down to somewhere between 30 and 40. Your eyes will thank you.
posted by Afroblanco at 10:55 AM on December 5, 2006

And yes, syntax highlighting will make your life easier.
posted by Afroblanco at 10:56 AM on December 5, 2006

I've heard that readability has something to do with the difference in luminosity between the foreground color and the background color. Black on white or white on black were suggested as too high of a contrast; something like white on navy or dark green were more preferable.
posted by almostpositive at 11:33 AM on December 5, 2006

Black on beige or light gray for me. There should be lots of contrast between the text and the background, and, also important, the relative brightness of your work area and your background color should be similar. So, if you program in a nice well-lit place, use black-on-light, and if you program in, say, a cave, use light-on-black. What this means for me is that I play with the brightness until the background color looks about as bright as my laptop's screen bezel.
posted by boaz at 11:41 AM on December 5, 2006

Colour Contrast Check lets you check different combinations of foreground and background colors to see if they meet W3C accessibility guidelines.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:01 PM on December 5, 2006

I use (slightly light)yellow on (slightly dark)blue.
A professor of mine recommended it several years ago, and I tried it and liked it.

My folk-neurological explaination is that it might have something to do with the way your brain splits color-- yellow-blue is one of the 3 channels your brain uses to process images (the other beging black-white and red-green.) Seems like lightish yellow on darkish blue captures two of those, perhaps.

Anyway, great seas of bright white on my monitor give me a headache after a very short while.
posted by blenderfish at 2:25 AM on December 6, 2006