Top 5 best SOLID background colors for LCD?

Question

Top 5 best SOLID background colors for LCD?

What are the top 5 best SOLID background colors for LCD?

- Best for display ENDURANCE.
- Best for lower ENERGY consumption.
- Best for lower display TEMPERATURE.

Black? Dark blue? Dark green? Dark red? White?

Any Internet link supporting such claims?

Thanks.

Mac mini 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo (2 GB RAM/80 GB HD), Mac OS X (10.4.10), Booting from external Firewire disk

Posted on Mar 17, 2008 5:33 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 18, 2008 12:17 AM in response to Gabriel Dorado

Most of the power for a LCD goes to the backlight, so what is on the display won't change the energy consumption. A white display should run slightly cooler, though, since more light is going out the front, instead of being adsorbed and converted to heat, so it might last a bit longer.

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Answer 2

Mar 18, 2008 1:13 AM in response to Malcolm Rayfield

Malcolm,

Thanks. Yet:

1. Iin my experience, the white color wears out LCDs with time. For instance, the top main Finder menu of the Apple Cinema Displays shows white all the time with Mac OS X, and wears out with time (several years). You can see it when the Mac is booting and such area is shown darker. Actually, it has usually being recommended to use a full solid black background as the best screen saver to increase the LCD useful life.

2. So, if your argument is correct, it seems that solid white is the best color for lower energy consumption, but solid black or a dark color could be better to increase LCD useful life.

3. Last but not least, the "Apple/System Preferences/Displays/Brightness" set at 50% or lower will also increase the LCD useful life (the less brightness, the better).

Right? Thanks again.

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Answer 3

Mar 18, 2008 3:15 AM in response to Gabriel Dorado

1. In my experience, the white color wears out LCDs with time. For instance, the top main Finder menu of the Apple Cinema Displays shows white all the time with Mac OS X, and wears out with time (several years). You can see it when the Mac is booting and such area is shown darker. Actually, it has usually being recommended to use a full solid black background as the best screen saver to increase the LCD useful life.

There can be image burn-in with LCDs, but Apple says it can be fixed
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=10639>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88343>
(They recommend white for fixing it.)

2. So, if your argument is correct, it seems that solid white is the best color for lower energy consumption,

White won't reduce the energy consumption, but the display should run slightly cooler since it is radiation more light, instead of adsorbing it.

but solid black or a dark color could be better to increase LCD useful life.

It seems that it the black that burns-in (since they recommend a white screen to fix it), but not permanently.

3. Last but not least, the "Apple/System Preferences/Displays/Brightness" set at 50% or lower will also increase the LCD useful life (the less brightness, the better).

Don't forget to set display sleep in "Energy Save" system preference. Reduced brightness will make the backlight last longer, but won't affect burn-in Display sleep will help both.

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Answer 4

Cmaig

Level 1

125 points

Mar 18, 2008 3:27 AM in response to Gabriel Dorado

1. Just imagine that the best background colour is white ... Will you kill your eyes for years with such un unconfortable colour just to preserve your screen?

2. White is the default state of an LCD display. The pixels are white when the screen is off. You can't see it because there is no backlight. That's why it uses less energy. It may also preserve the pixels.

3. Yes. And I think it is the only thing to consider to make your display last longer

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Answer 5

BSteely

Level 5

7,643 points

Mar 18, 2008 4:25 AM in response to Cmaig

+2. White is the default state of an LCD display. The pixels are white when the screen is off. You can't see it because there is no backlight. That's why it uses less energy. It may also preserve the pixels+

Actually, an LCD can be either normally white or normally black, where "normal" means the state when no voltage is applied to the pixel cells. The IPS technology that Apple mainly uses is normally black, not normally white. But I agree with pretty much everything else that's been said in this thread. Basically, the background has approximately zero bearing on the LCD's useful life compared with factors relating to the backlight, so it doesn't bear consideration.

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Answer 6

Mar 18, 2008 6:11 AM in response to Malcolm Rayfield

Thanks.

Here is my experience after eight years of using an Apple Cinema Display. If I look at the top Mac Finder menu bar, the white area in it is not white at all as the rest of the screen, but somewhat grayish (thus, burnt out to some extent).

That is what I meant that the white background actually burns out the LCD. I can also see it if I boot in single user more, verbose, etc, in which there is no such menu with its contents, and all the screen has a white background. Likewise, using applications like PiXel Check or Pixel Tester, which allow to set all screen.

Besides that, my eyes are more important than tje display, of course... But at the same time I love to know how things work...

🙂

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