To solve this for me, I wrote a very simple script which always creates a blue layer for me. It can be modified to have any other color you want, including black.
I put in the action and hacked it instead of default Cmd/Ctrl+L with a remapping app (you it can be simply run with an F-key instead).
You can download the script here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/78vzy3u79e6erxu/New%20Layer%20Custom%20Color.jsx

Define a default color for a layer, that is, whenever you create a new layer in illustrator it will keep the programmed color, so it will no longer generate a different color for each new layer created.

Currently new layers are the same color as the foreground color, which makes it impossible to see the nodes and lines (see attached.) Having to always manually change the color to something that contrasts is annoying. Please allow an option to either set a default color you choose, or an option to make Illustrator choose the most contasting color it can find to the foreground color automatically.

Chris, not you alone.
Check out this script by Takataka:
https://sttk3.com/blog/tips/illustrator/reject-yellow-layer3.html

Please remove the yellow layer colour from the automatically generated layers.

When a layer is colour is set to yellow, it is very difficult to utilize drawing tools because it is difficult to see the yellow guide-cursor against a white artboard.

I have been using for my work illustrator for ten years now, and this has always bothered me. Whenever a yellow layer is added, I have to manually switch it to another colour.

Thanks!

Can you create a preference that makes every new layer use the same colour? The first thing I have to do when creating a new layer is to change the colour back to light blue (my preferred colour). I understand why a user might want different colours but I cannot see many of them with my colour vision deficiency. Thank you very much.

It has been posted but it seems it has been ignored. I suspect that it is due to the fact that majority of the ILLUSTRATOR TEAM are NOT real users and/or designers. If that offends you, face the truth of it or provide some reasoning.
Bottom line is that making new layers assigns different colors for the selected objects AND most of these colors are just useless! I have created a visual reference for the first 8 colors for comparison.
So, please with sugar and honey on top and a sweet chai on the side… I am NOT suggesting that you kill the colors; just add a choice that allows us, designers who make a living from use of software to create new layers with a default color of BLACK and if we need to, we can change it ourselves.
To make it even better, allow assigning a default color for new layers so that those eagle vision users who love working on a layer with YELLOW color outlines can always use that choice.
I am not making this suggestion because I started using ILL yesterday; I have used it since version 88, long before many of the team were walking and beta tested it.

Normally the first layer that is created is Black lines by default but as we make more layers, each new one gets a new color. The problem is that most of these NEW colors are not very visible on the most used background being white. Since the first days I have requested that there be a choice to lock the color of the new layers created to be Black or a chosen color unless the user wants to change it. At present, every file that I work on has about 20+ layer s and I have to change color at least 15 times to see my outlines, etc.
I have used AI since the 88 version.