Pick a color, preferably solid, and stick to that
Just be sure to stay away from bold primary colors, except as accents. Bold backgrounds make it hard to focus on text or other graphics. This is especially bad if the background colors are not only bold, but also at the ends of the color spectrum (blues or reds). Trying to read anything on a bold blue or red background is pretty much guranteed to give you a headache. Try it in Word or Publisher sometime to see what I'm talking about.
Brad
Pick a color, preferably solid, and stick to that.
I like a dark one for the background. Like black or charcoal gray. It really makes the colors in the photo/artwork stand out.
In this forum, I'm using the Mercury color scheme to display. That is a close example of what I am talking about.