Dark or light Background – advice sought

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A friend is preparing a few slides to use in a church service. We can turn the lights off, but we don’t have anything approaching a blackout capability.
Would she be better off putting dark text on a light background, or using light text on a dark background.

My instinct is to keep the background light, but I would appreciate advice from people with more experience.

Many thanks

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I agree with your instinct – in such a situation dark text on a light background is probably more readable than light text on a dark background. And choose a high contrast colour scheme rather than a fancy colour scheme – black on white is better than gray on white or similar.

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I use dark text on a light background for small(ish) audiences in meeting rooms.
I prefer light text on a dark background for theatre size audiences with large screens.

I don’t know whether your church is an intimate building with a few dozeon people (go for my first option) or a major piece of ecclesiastical architecture in which you have a congration of hundreds (go for my second option)

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I use dark text on a light background for small(ish) audiences in meeting rooms.
I prefer light text on a dark background for theatre size audiences with large screens.

I don’t know whether your church is an intimate building with a few dozeon people (go for my first option) or a major piece of ecclesiastical architecture in which you have a congration of hundreds (go for my second option)

We’re at the smaller end of the congregation size, but our minister is very good so we mostly don’t get a few ‘dozeon’

Thanks for the advice.

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I would want to know more about the content before offering advice, but in general…

– If you are asking your audience to read a lot of copy, go black text on a white background

– If you seek to be more evocative with dramatic images and simple text messages, the reverse will generally be more effective

Rick Altman
Author, “Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck”
http://www.BetterPresenting.com

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I prepare PowerPoints for our church service and find that if you use contrasting colours they work well.

For example, I often use a dark blue or dark green or a red background and use either yellow or white font. On the subject of fonts I always use Arial or similar style of font.

One thing to be carefull about is that while it looks great on the computer screen it may not look good depending on the amount of light in the room.

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