Have you ever been to a website whose background makes you dizzy? Maybe not. Hopefully not. I don’t wish dizziness on anyone. However, I have. My eyes are not super sensitive, but crazy backgrounds do bother me. Certain patterns look like an optical illusion when scrolled. You may not realize it, but they do. I see countless blogs where I literally want to close my eyes while scrolling. I have clicked out of many sites before the content even loaded because the background hurts my eyes. It’s either waaay too bright, or the patterns appear to be illusions. One of the worst things that can happen to you as a blogger is to lose a reader before they ever read! Plus, you don’t want the focus of your site to be the background do you? It’s your content that you want people looking at. I like to tell people to follow the KISS principle when creating their website background. Keep it Stupid Simple. (Or Keep it Simple, Stupid – but that’s not as friendly!) What’s the point of a crazy busy background anyway? Make other aspects of your blog visually appealing and they will stand out way more with a simple background. Your background should be just that, a background. A simple, less than noticeable pattern (or not) that lies behind your great content, taking nothing away from the reason your readers are there – you.

Just remember, go easy on your website background.