The influence of brightness combinations and background color on legibility and subjective preference under negative polarity.

This study explores the influence of color combinations on legibility and aesthetic feelings for the currently popular negative polarity interface design. Legibility was measured in two different ways in two tasks: time threshold (Task I) and a 9-point subjective rating (Task II). In Task I, we combined an adaptive program to measure 37 participants' recognition thresholds and online pseudo-word recognition tasks; in Task II, 44 participants' subjective preferences were measured using a scale. We found that higher brightness contrasts led to better legibility; different background colors with identical brightness and saturation did not cause significant differences; brighter texts produced better subjective preference for aesthetic appearance, legibility, and visual comfort; and different background colors had no significant effect on subjective preference. These findings have implications for digital interface design.Practitioner Summary In display design under negative polarity, experimental results show that higher brightness contrast leads to higher legibility, while background color has no such significant effect; background brightness and hue have no significant effect on subjective preference, but text brightness and background color have significant interaction effect on subjective preference.