Choose a Dark-Colored Computer Background

The way your computer monitor looks makes a difference. Conventional computer monitors consume a lot of energy to display text and images. Reduce this energy draw a bit by changing the color of your screen background. The energy required to display a dark-colored background can be up to 20 percent less than the energy used to display a white background.

Changing the screen color from white to blue for documents and spreadsheets (this can be set as a default for some word processing programs) may reduce your computer's energy consumption by up to 10 percent. Over the course of a year, you could save up to 30 kilowatt-hours of energy-that's enough to run a laptop for 1,200 hours. Website managers can help viewers save energy by choosing a darker-colored background to display content.

If all computer-owning households in the United States set their document backgrounds from white to blue or black, the resulting energy cost savings could total approximately more than $500,000 per hour of collective computer use. What a cool-looking bunch of monitors that would be.

Department of Energy