accessibility - What are the negative and positive aspects of dark color scheme?

I am using Light-on-dark color scheme (dark background with light text) in my application.

My question is, what are the negative and positive aspects of this color scheme and why this color scheme is not widely used?

Answer

Darker color scheme are often used effectively in software that focuses heavily on visual content. For example Adobe Lightroom, Adobe After Effects, Microsoft Expression Blend, and Kaxaml are interfaces that have a dark color theme. This allows the interface to fade into the background and let the content come alive

Why is it not widely used? I guess it depends on your crowd. For these applications, it tends to work out great but many people don't like dark interfaces. At my company I created an interface for a very complicated piece of software using a dark UI. It helped to simplify everything and bring attention to the necessary elements at specific times. The problem was, a lot of people complained. "It's too dark," "it doesn't look good on my laptop when I am using in the bright sun" etc. Some people just hate dark interfaces.

Bottom line: if your application is very content driven, esp with visual content, consider a dark interface but be prepared for some opposition.

Alternative solution: provide 2 themes, one light and one dark. This is done in Microsoft's Expression Blend (although the light theme looks quite awful, IMO)

Also, it is important to note that it is often a bit more difficult to get a dark interface that works well. A little more care must be given to legibility of text on the dark background (i.e. making it bright enough to be legible but not so bright that it is distracting to read).