Background+Text: Which colors go best?

Okay, I can never make up my mind about this, so I thought I would put it to you:
In general, besides black& white, which combinations of text+background work the best in terms of reader-friendliness and legibility?

The site itself is pretty colorful, with a strong theme of black and blue, but the text box needs to step up and show a bold contrast. So blue and black won't work well either.

If you want to see the site before answering it is here:

Prophesy 2012

Your suggestions? Green rep for helpful responses.

 

You have missed out Prophesy in the link

 

Ooops...hope I don't keep doing that. Must be a Freudian slip...that's the one I really wanted. (lol)

The link is fixed, so you can check it out. Color schemes, anyone?

 

1. desaturate or maybe darken the background a bit as it tends to catch the eyes attention coz it's the same level of saturation of blue like the text.

2.dark gray for the navigation boxes, smaller font size or maybe change the font family, verdana or tahoma would do.

3. try playing with gray for the links. gray for the visited links. lighter gray for the unvisited.

i don't say that these are the best settings for your site, it's just my opinion. good luck on your site!

 

I agree the dark gray is a good choice

 

Well, the consensus seems to...gray. Not the first color I had in mind...rep added anyway. Thanks for taking a moment to respond.
I'll consider changing the links that way-but to clarify, I'm trying to decide on the text box, with the content essay and theme image.
About fonts...I know that nearly every site on the web uses some sanserif font like arial or verdana, but I absolutely hate the way sanserif fonts read. For example, l's and i's can look practically the same.
I'm not really happy about the font I'm using either, so if can you also add serf fonts and recommended sizes, I'd appreciate your opinions.

 

i think the textbox is fine, just needed some little tweaking, i suggest adding border since your textbox is white. but make it the same color as your navigation boxes.

for the font size i suggest 11pt or 12pt, compact paragraphs makes it easier to read. have you tried using tahoma?

again these are just my opinions, try experimenting as well. good luck!

 

A list of colour combinations maybe useful

http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/design/color_combinations.php3

or a colour picker

http://websitetips.com/colortools/sitepro/

 

Just a few rules of thumb:

Any combination of black, white, and grey is generally an attractive text/background color scheme.

If you can find something else that works, then do your own thing, but whatever you do, stay away from neon anything - that means plain shades of yellow, red, green, and blue, or anything close. Also, black backgrounds are generally never a good idea.

 

Thats agreeable!

I second that"

 

when i hovering over the links in the menu i get many stars that covers the text. my problem is that i cant read it anymore unless i move the pointer outside of the link. thats very annoying effect you have.

another problem is the logo of prophesy 2012, its very difficult to read what is says. the font, the grudge effect and the inner drop shadow effect, all of this combined makes it very difficult to read

to the point of the topic, the gray text in dark background makes it difficult to read. dark gray on dark background is not good. try always to have a bright color in dark backgrounds, like white.

 

Your orange text on blue might work. The white seens out of place on such a colorful site.

 

Background: #222222
Text: #999999

Background: #990000
Text: #111111

Background: #006699
Text: #999999

They're some of my favourites.

Edit: Thanks for the reputation.