Background colors in a graph

I'm trying to find two or three colors that look great as background colors in a graph. The color are there to separate different areas of a graph, but should not obstruct the view of lines/bars containing the actual data. Some colors look great on paper or on my laptop, but do not look good when projected during a talk (either indistinguishable from white or from each other). Do you have any suggestion? What background colors look great when projected? Thank you!