I much prefer white text on dark background and normally have the brightness on my monitor turned to minimum, otherwise a day at the computer feels like a day in the snow with no sunglasses. I think the issue is too much contrast - grey on white or white on grey is easier than white on black or black on white.

Rather than colours or fonts, the biggest obstacle to reading for me is normally excessive clutter from adverts and other flashing or moving boxes, but they're easily avoided with browser plugins.

It's clear one design will never please everyone, so the best thing is to offer two style sheets you can toggle between.

Thank you all for the great feedback. I'll be experimenting with new colour schemes and will then ask you what you think about them Thanks!

I'm a usability designer and following is what I usually suggest: The easiest text to read online is sans serifed, black text on a slightly off-white background (just barely gray to town down the brightness). White on black/dark color isn't too bad, as long as the font is easy to read, a nice size with adequate spacing.

You could put blocks of text with the lighter background and leave the rest black to break up the text and still keep the sleek black look.

My web designer is working on it...already changed the font to a more screen friendly one....now the background next...

Yes, it does bother me, it's one of big my pet peeves. Strains my eyes.

I find it a bit negative.

and......what do you think about it now? - www.theartofslowtravel.com

Ow! The background is very bright!

Couldn't you make it a little darker - light grey or green or something?

better but still too contrasty, imo. i would be more sparing in my use of deep black and instead use a dark shade of grey.

so still annoying? AAaaaaa (bang head agaist door). Will work on it (actually my web designer, cos I know s*** about this stuff.

there is veeerrrrry little dark black - it's just the blog title and post headings, everything else is dark grey.

The easiest on the eyes is black text with very light gray background. It should appear almost white, but not glaring. I'm a usability engineer. This is what I do for a living, but I won't charge ya this time ;-)

Another option is color around the main text (similar to on this board.. white in the middle blue on the edges.. will help break up the brightness )

Looks great to me now. Love the idea of a little bit of color on the edges, to give it a page-y feling. But either way, looks fantastic now.

We changed the background to light grey. Thanks very much for the tip!

Thanks! Glad it's ok now

For my ebooks I use yellow on black. Much more restful on the eyes.

The narrow text is annoying and for me is inconsistent to the H2 formatting. It also makes your article text harder to read.

The background conflicts with the link text colour in your articles. Your background would be better off-white than grey.

This site is protected by WP-CopyRightPro doesn't work, CTRL-A selects all - and the use of that affects how the site looks and behaves. I believe it changes the way your text displays too.

Yep. I know about the text link colour. That's still a left-over of the previous black background and I will change it when i have a minute.
I also know about the wp-copyrightpro. After I got it, I realised it is pretty useless. You can't highlight bits of texts but it doesn't blog CTRL-A, and the only way you can protect photos is by disabling right clicking, which I don't want to do because that will also disable the 'open in new tab' option.
Thanks for the comment