We have developed a new modulation method--inverted pulse position modulation (I-PPM) and subcarrier inverted pulse position modulation (SC-I-PPM)--that provides superior LED brightness for visible-light communications. In addition, the new modulation method SC-I-PPM is not affected by background light. In this paper, we investigated several modulation methods in details and set up a standard with which to evaluate the performance of modulation methods. Several modulation methods are subjected to experiments to clarify their performance. Experiments show that subcarrier modulation suppresses the influence of background light and that our new modulation best maintains LED brightest.