Hi,

I'm playing around with a darker theme for my site, my current experiment page is http://www.notsounknown.co.uk/nsu/test.php (the middle column only at the moment).

The site is aimed at 'grungie' people, so I want to move away from the light theme to target them a bit better.

At the moment I have the background as a fairly dark grey (#666666). I'm quite happy with the text being a lighter grey, I think it looks quite good (currently #CCCCCC). But, the only other colour I can think of to go with it (as links, headers etc) is orange (using #FF9900).

Can anyone suggest any other colours that'll work well as text or links on a dark background?

Also if anyone has some general advice for working with darker schemes, or knows any good resources, please let me know.

Cheers

bright green like #ceff00;

Thanks, I'll see what I can do with that.

How about the design itself, well the tables... What do you think of them (middle and right columns that is).

Simon

the only problem i have is the hover on the nsu news scroller-thing... white on light-grey is reaaaally hard to read

The current choice of text colours lacks contrast and makes it very hard to read, especially the light green and grey. Right now you have vibrant, tints of colours; hardly what I'd associate with 'grunge'.

Reduce the colour saturation to take the edge of that vibrancy and use shades, not tints. By adding black, muted tones, you'll hit the grunge factor more realistically. While you're at it - increase the contrast of your text content - make it easier to read.

karinnen - the scroller will either be going or re-designed shortly, it won't be staying like that.

metho - Firstly, I'm not sure where you looked, just noticed the test.php page is now broken! try www.notsounknown.co.uk.

Could you perhaps suggest some colours I could try. I'm by no means a designer, I just realised that I could change the look dramatically by making changes to only a few images. To be honest I'm not quite sure what the difference between shades and tints is.

As for the 'grunge' look - I want it to be a little more 'rough' looking but still appealing to a fairly wide audience, hence still trying to keep the content fairly clean, if you understand where I'm coming from. It's a bit of a comprimise I guess, which is why I thought of the brighter colours.

Unfortunatly I can't seem to find any sites with the sort of look I'm trying for at the moment. I've just finished a 16 hour security shift so my brain isn't at it's best anyway!

Thanks for your help so far
Simon