Dark Room = Dark Slide Background

Saturday afternoon and I’m going to take a few minutes away from the first bowl games of the year.  As a result, this post will be pretty quick.

Today I want to riff on slide backgrounds.  People ask me all the time, should I use a light one or a dark one?

Well, the answer is really simple.  Dark room; use a dark background with light or white text.  Light room; use a very light background with black or very dark text. 

Attached is a 2 slide PowerPoint presentation you can use to check this out for yourself.  Here are what the two slides look like:

       

Go into a conference room and fire up PowerPoint in SlideShow mode and pull up the first slide with the Black background.  If you have the lights on it will look washed out.  But if you turn the lights way down or off the text just POPS OUT at you.  Go to the back of the room and see which line is the smallest line you can read.  In many 30 x 40 foot conference rooms, people can read the size 20 font. 

Now bring up the slide with the Light background while the room is still dark.  You can probably still read the size 20 font, but the slide seems to bloom a little before your eyes due to the while background.  Now turn the lights back on.  I’ll bet the slide looks great.  As a result of this little test here are a few observations.

1. Dark Room – Use a Dark Background (Blue, Black, Green, and Grey are best)
2. Light Room – Use a Light Background (White and Grey are best)
3. Almost all rooms greater than 50 people should be a dark room.  The light text contrasts better for readability in large spaces.

 

So that’s it…now it’s back to football for me.

DK

mailto:dkarle@microsoft.com