A while back my boss had me creating templates for our forums. I was mostly playing with the code, and trying to figure things out. I would pick color combos I found pretty, and apply them.

Unfortunately I wasn’t totally thinking about usability at the time, some of them are way too bright, and uncomfortable to look at. I’ve found the ones that I like best are the bland ones, with only one bright color that’s used as an accent, and the rest as neutral tones.

The main background should be a calm and gentle color, if too bright it could make the user uncomfortable, and navigate away from the sight. I know I almost did a few times today until we changed it to something mellower.

You can see how much easier it is to view a simple color scheme at Informed Gaming Forums.