Ian Storm Taylor: Never Use Black
Most of the body copy and other elements that are dark on pages are actually dark grey, not black. Black overpowers. This article explains it.
Black overpowers everything else.
When you put pure black next to a set of meticulously picked colors, the black overpowers everything else. It stands out because itâs not natural. All of the âblackâ everyday objects around you have some amount of light bouncing off of them, which means they arenât black, theyâre dark gray. And that light probably has a tint to it, so theyâre not even dark gray, theyâre colored-dark gray.
Lots of the apps we use on a daily basis have blacks that arenât really blacks, but dark grays. Twitterâs sidebar, Sublime Text 2âs sidebar if you have Soda Dark installed (which you should!), new Photoshopâs background, the calendar widget. Even Twitter Bootstrap. They all use colors close to black, but slightly muted so they donât overpower the rest of the elements on the screen.