An electro-optic display is driven using a plurality of different drive schemes. The waveforms of the drive schemes are chosen such that the absolute value of the net impulse applied to a pixel for all homogeneous and heterogeneous irreducible loops divided by the number of transitions in the loop is less than about 20 percent of the characteristic impulse (i.e., the average of the absolute values of the impulses required to drive a pixel between its two extreme optical states).