At least one other site now has a customised top bar: the one at [Science Fiction and Fantasy](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/) has been made slightly translucent in order to make it fit better with their site. Obviously translucency wouldn't be appropriate in our case, but a similarly subtle change in colour scheme would make it a lot less visually jarring.

Edit: [Ask Ubuntu][1] also has a customised bar. It's the same colour scheme as our one, but has been moved to fit into the layout in a different way. (It still looks like a compromise.)

Since there is now precedent on two other sites for customising the top bar, I hope the request to do so on ours will be genuinely considered.


  [1]: https://askubuntu.com/