Web Design: Grey Text on White Background. Solarize Color Disease

By Xah Lee. Date: 2012-03-04. Last updated: 2019-04-22.

Starting around 2010, more and more websites use grey text on white background, making it hard to read.

Exhibition

macOS software update 2017 12 12 21493 — macOS software update 2017-12-12

racket web design grey on white — racket scheme lisp web design, grey on white 2016-12-22

web design gray text on white — grey on white. 2012-08-16

Orange on Gray!

arstechnica screenshot 2012-03-09 — Can you read those orange texts? (arstechnica screenshot, 2012-03-09)

Greyer and Greyer!

web design gray on white 2013-06-11 — grey on white. 2013-06-11

gray on white chrome devtools website 2015-08-05 — Gray on white. 2015-08-15 From Google. https://developer.chrome.com/devtools

web design gray text on white openstudiolab 2015-08-15 — web design gray on white. 2015-08-15. From ~~http://www.openstudio.fr/lab/jQuery-virtual-tour,67.html?lang=en~~

web design gray on white projectured.org 2014-03-15 — web design gray on white, ~~http://projectured.org/~~, as of 2014-03-15

web design gray text on white Joe Arms Erlang 2015-10-16 — Joe Arms's blog, inventor Erlang language, as of 2015-10-16. [ source ~~http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html~~]

The Solarize Disease

There's a website called Solarize, that focuses on desigining the most readable color theme. This is the disease that began the gray on white.

Witness:

solarized text — Solarize website screenshot

Do you find the text easy to read?

Things get worse:

The Solarized color themes are low contrast, and supposedly works better when your computer display is under sunlight. Maybe so, but it looks terrible indoors.

see also: 〔contrast rebellion 2013-01-22 By Zoltán Gócza, Richard Gazdik. At http://contrastrebellion.com/ , accessed on 2013-01-22〕