The Colour of Your Bathroom
                By Jesse Smith

       It occurred to my at about 3:00am this morning that my bathroom
is the wrong colour. Not that I usually notice. It's just that early
in the morning, late at night or the middle of said night that it offends
me. Don't get me wrong, I like having it here. It's just that it seems
to be the wrong colour. It is white.

        So what's wrong with a white bathroom? Simple, white is the colour
that is made up of all colours. This, basically speaking, means that the
highest amount of light possible is being reflected from the surface
of anything white. Whether it be your tub, your sink, your toilet or
your tile floor. If it's white, all the light it can throw at you is
headed straight for your eyes.

        Picture this scenario. You stumble out of bed at 6:00am and
head for the bathroom. You fumble for the light switch and then POW!
Your eyes are assaulted by light. Light everywhere. From the bulb over
the sink, from the damn silver-backed fiend of a mirror to the smooth
sides of the bath to the round surface of the toilet. You suddenly
go from a dim hall to the sea of brightness. Nice, if you want to be in
a Mr. Clean ad, but not if you want to face the world at 6:00am.

        My eyes hurt just from thinking about this too much. Now you
have to stumble and groan while your poor eyes get used to the abuse and
you can open them again.

        I wouldn't bring this up if I didn't have a solution. Simply put,
change the colour of the bathroom. Sure there are green, yellow or
blue bath colours. However, looking through the Sears catalogue has
made me realize that they're light colours. Fresh and spring-timey colours
with which to sear your eyes.

        Let's start making bathrooms a dimmer, darker place. It does't
have to be all gloomy or depressing. I think we just need to tone it
down a bit. For example, a navy blue wouldn't be so bad. Navy is a pretty
colour that won't hurt you. Basically, there should be only two bright
places in your bathroom. The light itself and the mirror over the sink.
Anywhere else should be a darker colour to let you wake up more gently.
How about a nice, forest brown? Or maybe a deep red? Oh, and while I'm
thinking about it, let's stop putting a row of lights over the sink. We
need one. Any more is over kill on your pupil.

        While I'm thinking about it, let's stop making our computer
screens look like too-shiny bathrooms too. Remember the good old days
when DOS screens where grey on black. Commodore 64s were grey on blue. Now
Windows and Linux and Macs come with the default settings of bright-white
backgrounds and dark text. This means that you not only have to stare
at a too-bright screen, you have to stare closely. However came up with
this idea should have his/her eyes poked out.

       Of course we can change these settings. However, has anyone besides
myself tried to set up Windows or Linux to have the nicer grey text on
a black background. First, let me pint out that this makes looking at the
screen ten times easier. It also lets you do it for longer time without
having to stop and blink. When I tried this though, I found that some
programs would change the background to black for me, but the text stayed
black too. I also found that most web pages often set their backgrounds to
white, but don't set the text colour. Let me tell you that being forced
to look at a white background really ticks me off. It's even worse when your
text is a bright grey. I have to high-light everything to make it blue
just to read it. Who tests these stupid things anyway?

        I'd really appreciate it if web page designers started paying more
attention to making the web pages readable for those of us that change
our settings. I'd also like OS's to stop blinding us with this crazy
eye searing white.