Effect of Color Contrast on Readability

Contrast has many applications in different medias; i.e., printing the texts and images (posters, billboards, business cards), screen displays (TVs, mobiles, laptops) and designing of software’s and websites. In this article, the color contrast feature is studied to investigate the manner of selection of colors for text and background in different displaying medias. In this regard, the features of color contrast, effective color parameters and effects of color contrast to distinguish the text from the background are studied and results of these effects in different medias are discussed. Based on studies have been down on color contrast features, it was found that readability, resolution, and using of various color combination for charming effect of the text should be considered. The results show that using different textures and backgrounds with different colors or contexts, can affect the readability, attractiveness and resolution of the texts. Besides, different factors related to the text arrengment, i.e., font type, size and space between words and lines may affect the readability. Finally, parameters such as changing the type of light source and the time factor can increase or decrease the color contrast property.