Quick Pro Tip for making the best looking spreadsheets in your office

It’s NOT emoji!

Not going to waste your time with an intro. Let’s jump straight to the part where you can learn to make text and numbers more elegant and more comfortable to read on screen.

Whenever you can choose the colors of text and background, don’t pick black for text and white for the background. Instead, choose the darkest gray possible for text and the lightest grey for the background.

That’s it. It’s that easy.

By subtly sanding the edges off the contrast like this, your documents will “feel” like black on white, but they’ll be much easier on the eyes. Plus, you’ll look like you know what you’re doing in a way that you just don’t when you go with the default colors like a chump.

Bonus

1. While you’re at it, pick a different font as well. But here’s the kicker: don’t pick any font that will make it look like you picked a font. Pick one that looks kinda like the default one, only ever so slightly different. (For the better.)
2. The main tip above? It works for color as well. Most people, If they wanted to make something with a blue background, would just pick the brightest, bluest blue, and then have white text over it. That’s amateur hour. It looks much better if you tone it down: pick the darkest blue that still looks blue for the background, and then a very light tone of blue or gray for the text.
3. For the same reasons, even if you’re forced to (or want to) work with a completely white background, still don’t just use black for the text color. Pick a dark grey.

This is Medium’s text color over the white background. See? It’s not black.