When I create or view a document in Windows 2013, I find that the layout is hard for me to read. The foreground document is pure white (FFFFFF) but the screen background color is a very very pale gray (F4F4F4). I almost can't distinguish between these colors.

Is there any way for me to change the background to a darker gray, or some other darker color, similar to that feature in Adobe Illustrator CS6?

I'm switching from Word 7 to 2013; I'm also switching from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1. So I may be asking some very basic questions.