Who knew that changing your website or blog’s color palette could make a HUGE environmental impact?
I’m constantly learning how incredibly easy it can be to live green.
Changing your blog or website’s color palette is definitely one simple and easy way to go green.
Mark Ontkush of the ecoIron blog posted on the power usage of displaying an all white screen vs an all black one.
He used the king of search engines, Google, as an example:
“Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktops. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 [b/c it takes 74 watts for white background and only 59 watts to display black background] watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs [Cathode Ray Tube], and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.”
Mark went on to post the EMERGY-C color palette, an energy efficient choice of colors that can be incorporated into one’s site or blog. I mean, let’s face it, no one wants to have an all black blog. That’d be ugly.
The above picture is the EMERGY-C palette which Mark describes as:
“Starting with the EnergyStar wattage ratings for different colors, Jon Doucette of Jonathan Design came up with the six colors at top. On average, this palette uses only about 3 or 4 watts more than a completely black screen. White is included as an accent color.”
We’ll keep the EMERGY-C palette and above linked EnergyStar display color wattage ratings in mind for the next re-redesign of The Fun Times Guide to Living Green.
I am proud to say that my personal blog is VERY energy efficient in its shadowy and mysterious design.
Do you have a blog or web site that utilizes an energy efficient color palette? If so, share the link in a comment.
Check out Mashable’s 10 Easy Ways To Green Your Web Site.
I think every little step toward living green is an awesome one… but eco-snobbery sucks! My goal is to help newbies learn the most important steps toward living green — individually and collectively. Personally, I strive to have as little impact as possible on Planet Earth while I'm here.
