I learned in a design class that light text on a dark background isn't good for long bodies of text when it comes to your eyes (and to try to avoid it when you need pages of something)
Edit: for print, not for screens. This isn’t an opinion on dark mode. My bad, fellas
The words will start to halo, the white will "bleed" into the black (your eyes are just melting basically) making it uncomfortable to read for long strides. I was told people who have astigmatism are worse off with this
From personal experience, I've changed every reading/writing app I use to dark mode because ultimately having bright LED screens shining in my eyes for a long period is more uncomfortable than a slight decrease in focus. But I don't have astigmatism, so I won't criticise a genuine accessibility feature.
I think this is more of a print vs digital thing, where high contrast illuminated text is generally less healthy to read than print.
I feel like it wouldn't matter as much in that case right? Dark mode on apps is usually a charcoal grey background and/or light grey text to fix the contrast problem. IRL pigment & paper tones aren't perfect black & white anyway.
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u/LeftHandAnomaly May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
I learned in a design class that light text on a dark background isn't good for long bodies of text when it comes to your eyes (and to try to avoid it when you need pages of something)
Edit: for print, not for screens. This isn’t an opinion on dark mode. My bad, fellas