Advice on dark background /light text color selection?

[ctpat3r]

My site sells gold and silver coin jewelry. Photos of the stuff are taken against the black background because "they look better on black". Let's assume that that's a constant and I can't change that.

I'm trying to find the best combination of background color/text color to go with gold coins pictures with black background. So far I've got dark grey page background, then black content background, and grey (#CCCCCC) text.

It looks ok, but I was wondering if anyone else had the same problem before (requirement that background be dark, but not necessarily black, possibly selling stuff that decidedly looked better on dark background and was of silver and gold color), and what color scheme they chose.

Silver (or grey? #CCCCCC) text on black is certainly easier on the eyes than white on black, but I'm still not sure if I couldn't do better.

Any advice or links would be appreciated. Thanks.

[divaone]

two tools for you:

a small free prog called 'add color'. its great for color sorting and also does small screen captures to finely detail colors.

colormatch.dk - offers a color matching palette that supplies complimentary colors.

gray, or cccccc, IMHO is still a bit too dark. make sure you view your pages during bright daylight hours as well as in darker conditions. using natural light, i've found some color combos are harder on the eyes at nighttime. a color like f4f4f4 sometimes works well.

also, you don't have to use a full black content area. you can divide the images on black backgrounds into individual sections and use a completely different page background color. perhaps add a different color border to the image/black background. is this clear? :)

hth