It depends on your outfit, if you are wearing something light colored like white or gray, than the lighter strap could look too color coordinated and not so nice, in that sense the darker strap is much more versatile, you can wear it practically with anything, but if you are wearing something darker like dark blue, black, brown etc then the lighter strap would look very very good, but the darker one too would look good with those colors. It’s a beautiful watch by the way.