Hey Andy,

This is actually the main reason why too many settings is a catch-22 situation. I have seen too many sites with template frameworks that ends up with such problems.

Generalizing a font color is going to be really tricky on a template because if there are any elements that has the same background color as the font, will eventually lead to the same problem.

My initial thoughts is to use the background color defined in https://monosnap.com/file/qdNCx2LXSqWb49fwMr8yLOtfquGqS0# to set the background color of that sidebar, but it's still going to be problematic, http://take.ms/pbcWlb

I think right now the best way is for you to add a custom css in vanilla to either reset the font color or change the background of the sidebar.

Assuming that you want to reset the font color on the sidebar,

[gist]
body .sidebar-element .nav.menu li > a,
body .sidebar-element .nav.menu li ul li a {
color: red !important;
}
[/gist]

Assuming that you want to reset the background on the sidebar,

[gist]
body .sidebar-element {
background: red;
}
[/gist]

Perhaps we could consider adding a sidebar background color settings in the future but to be honest, that would lead to another set of errors if they choose a background that is the same color of some of the text there