I'm not sure I uderstand the problem, although I agree that the Collection and other screens are rather bright. I use the Neuxe background, but that doesn't help much. But, the white screens are the ones that are mostly text, and black text on white background is fairly standard, and I prefer it when I'm doing any maintenance or editing work on the Collection and other pages.
If you're having to "minimize", I presume you're running Zune and playing music in the background. Doesn't your screen saver with the eye candy display? When I launch music from the Collection page, the artists' photographs or my album art start up after about a minute. Isn't your eye candy starting up? Otherwise, why not let your Quickplay page display with your favorite pins while your music plays?
There is a check box on the settings->display screen where you can select that Zune go to a "now playing" screen whenever it is idle. My box is checked, but I've never actually figured out what that check actually does. Hope the above helps.