My opinion. DO NOT use a dark background for your blog’s content area. It’s repelling, it’s ugly, it’s eye-wrenching and it’s simply “reader-shooing” if you know what I mean. You are going to chase all your readers away before your blog can fully load.
The only reason I can think of, other than the one used by Adsense manipulators to increase their click-throughs, for wanting to have a dark background for your blog contents is because of the “coolness” factor. You might think a dark background is cool, gives your blog personality a sense of mystery, makes people think you are different from others.
Imagine a newspaper that has their news printed upon pieces of black colored newsprint paper. What more, with greyish fonts that seems to be hiding behind the paper, like shy little ants, afraid of showing themselves. Would you want to continue reading the news, no matter how sensational, with eyes screwed up to your brows?
The first look might be impressive. Impressive enough even to justify a second look, but that’s where it all ends. The moment they find that it is quite impossible to read your blog without screwing up their eyes, or highlighting the fonts, they are off.
Okay, so you want to cheat yourself by saying, “NO, it’s not because I want to be cool and unique, I just love dark colors and black is my favorite color.” Right, I can also bluff myself to believe that. You can’t live without having a dark colored blog, but hey, can’t you at least make your fonts brighter? White on black is a good contrast you know. So are many flourescent colors like yellow or even green. Or do you think having your articles stand out is being “square” and you can only really be cool when your posts are hard to read.
At the end of the day, it’s your choice, but I certainly have not come across any blogs that has tens of thousands readers using a dark background for their content area. In my humble opinion, these are the really cool ones.
