Just so people know, the background being labeled white is not actually white, its a light grey.
THIS IS WHITE TEXT - CAN YOU REaD IT?
f5f5f5
one 1/2 is the forum colour f5f5f5 - the other plain white ffffff - I see no difference.
There is also a hidden message :oD
If you actually have your monitor set up properly Egg there is actually a very big difference to #f5f5f5 and #ffffff. At least it is coming to light that a number of people here have bad monitor setup and to high contrast. Not just this site, others and general day to day it must look way off.
My samsung, dell, macbookpro and imac you can easily see the differences in colour and still bright. Mac you can not get any more gloss / in your face screens.
Changing it though. A different default theme with standard layout and this kept as an option I will do over the weekend asap and tweak both.