Went with dark gray text on a light gray background despite everyone saying no

My client wanted a soft, modern look for their bakery website. Every designer I talked to said go with black on white for readability. I picked a dark charcoal on a pale warm gray instead. Ran it through a contrast checker and it passed at 4.6 to 1 for normal text. Customer was thrilled and I haven't had a single complaint about legibility in 6 months. Anyone else bend the rules and get away with it?

2 comments

2 Comments

river18319d ago

mark_fisher48 mentioned hearing about a similar thing on a podcast. The thing nobody talks about is how important context is for these choices. A bakery website is warm and inviting, not a government form where people need to scan for info fast. Those contrast checkers are a good starting point but they don't account for real world viewing conditions like screen brightness settings or ambient light. Dark gray on light gray can actually work better for people with certain vision issues like astigmatism because the harsh black on white creates visual noise for them. You found a sweet spot where the math said it was fine and the real world experience backed it up. Sometimes bending the rules means you actually made a better rule for that specific situation.

mark_fisher4819d agoMost Upvoted

Heard a similar story on a design podcast once, worked out fine for them too.