This is a simple little tip but it really helps.

The next time you choose an accent color for a row or column of a table, try to choose the lightest accent color that will get the job done. Often times it feels like we need to pick a bright, bold color, because we really want to accentuate the information, but less is more in this case. The truth is, our eyes are very good at discerning even very slight differences in the hue or saturation of a color, and a much lighter color value will still have the desired effect.

The main reason it’s so tempting to pick one of the brighter, bolder colors is, I think, due to the way the color picker is laid out in most applications: little swatches of varying shades and tints of a color. Presented this way, the darker shades are much more noticeable, and since that’s the effect we want for that row of the table, that’s the one we go with.

When presented this way, the darker hues appear much more noticeable, which makes them seem like the best choice for an accent color.

But look what happens.

In the slide below, I’ve chosen colors at the darker end of the spectrum of options given by the color picker. They’re much bolder, but they make it a little difficult to read the text. Even if you were to change the text to something with a higher contrast (such as white) the text would be more readable but the overall look of the whole table would still be fairly hard on the eyes.

Bolder colors are harder on the eyes.

The only thing I changed from the slide above to the slide below is to select color values from the opposite end of the light/dark spectrum. You can see that even though the colors seem weaker in the color picker, they still offer plenty of contrast with the plain white rows around them and it’s much easier to read the black text.

Lighter colors are easier to look at but still draw attention to the important rows.

As is usually the case, good design is often about being subtle and understated. By understanding a little about how amazingly sensitive our eyes are it’s possible to achieve big effects with less color.