What is the purpose of using a very dark color for text instead of a pure black?

Question

I have seen that some web designs implement an almost black font color (hex #001c00) in their designs instead of a pure black color (hex #000). Does the design actually benefit from this or is this practically the same as using a black color? I am a hobbyist web designer and developer and can't seem to grasp the difference.

Answer 1

I wouldn't say there's any benefit per say, just pure preference.

Maybe pure black is too sharp and they want something a shade softer. It could also simply provide a different shade for a different section to make it stand out slightly differently without changing the color completely.

A good example of this would be the header area of this very page. In the very skinny navigation menu at the very top of this page, it seems to be pure black. But the bigger menu bar below that includes the logo and additional buttons seems to be an off black. In this instance they obviously wanted a dark menu/header area, but they wanted to differentiate the two.

Let me know if this helps.

Answer 2

This is usually from someone that does not understand CMYK vs. RGB. CMYK utilized in the Press world is pure black - K. RGB is the absence of any color values. This would be seen as 4-color black. RGB Black represents true black in the world of the web / video. You can see this if you create these colors with one being set to CMYK. Another set to RGB. Then taking color samples of the blacks involved.