There are a number of aspects to light mode vs. dark mode. One important aspect is ambient lighting: to avoid eye strain, the average display brightness should be similar to the ambient lighting level. At least that's the general recommendation, and it matches my experience. So unless one works in the dark, that means light mode is more ergonomic. At night in bed though I read with dark mode on an iPad.
There also seems to be some scientific evidence that dark on light text is generally easier on the eyes than light on dark text: https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/15152.
I don't know how well-grounded that is (and whether it's independent from ambient lighting), but from personal experience I tend to agree with it. With white text on black, there is some blooming effect that makes reading more straining.
Finally, there are still many GUI applications that do not support dark mode very well (if at all), and a mixed environment (e.g. a dark-mode web site on a light-mode desktop) is just unpleasant.
For all those reasons, black on white works better for me.
I've seen this idea mentioned before, and while I don't know for 'average user' for my near sighted old butt, generally working in a fairly dark room...
'Dark themes' are much easier for me to work with for long periods.
I like 'medium' contrast (ambers, yellows, greys, greens) on a dark background the best.
Yeah - I just find it interesting that I've gravitated to preferring darker environments for screen work...I see those 'room setups' where people have bright sunny windows near the computer and just think "oh god, the glare!" :-P
> One important aspect is ambient lighting: to avoid eye strain, the average display brightness should be similar to the ambient lighting.
Which average (mode, median, arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, other?) of which measure of brightness?
> So unless one works in the dark, that means light mode is more ergonomic.
Does it? I’d like to see the work on that. IME, with common monitor settings, the brightness of most of the screen in light mode is typically much brighter than anything other thab directly looking straight at light fixtures in a typical work environment, it doesn't tend to approximate the ambient lighting level. Light mode on a purely reflective e-Ink type display would approximate ambient lighting, but that's not the kind of display usually used.
There also seems to be some scientific evidence that dark on light text is generally easier on the eyes than light on dark text: https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/15152. I don't know how well-grounded that is (and whether it's independent from ambient lighting), but from personal experience I tend to agree with it. With white text on black, there is some blooming effect that makes reading more straining.
Finally, there are still many GUI applications that do not support dark mode very well (if at all), and a mixed environment (e.g. a dark-mode web site on a light-mode desktop) is just unpleasant.
For all those reasons, black on white works better for me.