When choosing what colours to use, can you add a bit more contrast? Some of us are colourblind and the colours you use to denote the difference between read messages and unread messages bleed together so we can't tell the difference.
I know from my experience all the styles for 3.1.x are all based off of ProSilver, and ProSilver uses a light yellow to denote new messages in the forum. Unfortunately, I can't see that light yellow, so I have a devil of a time finding new messages.