Dark mode is an alter­na­tive dis­play set­ting for web­sites that swaps out the usu­al bright, white back­grounds for dark­er shades, typ­i­cal­ly black or grey. It’s designed to reduce eye strain, espe­cial­ly in low-light envi­ron­ments, by min­imis­ing screen bright­ness. Instead of blind­ing whites and bright colours, dark mode offers a more mut­ed and soft­er contrast.

Dark mode has always been pos­si­ble in com­put­ing, but it’s only become pop­u­lar in recent years. Its rebirth may be root­ed in the 2010s when devel­op­ers found it eas­i­er on the eyes to code with a dark back­ground. Years lat­er, as the gen­er­al pub­lic’s screen time increased, tech giants like Apple and Google began inte­grat­ing dark mode into their oper­at­ing sys­tems (cir­ca 2018–2021), and web­sites and apps soon fol­lowed suit.

Eye strain is a gen­uine con­cern amongst users, espe­cial­ly those whose jobs involve using com­put­ers all day. Dark mode is now a stan­dard fea­ture on many plat­forms, but web­sites have to adapt their web design if they want to opt in.

This blog will explore imple­ment­ing dark mode into your busi­ness’s web­site design and explain the best prac­tices you should fol­low to exe­cute this optimally.

Let’s dive in:

Why should you implement dark mode in your web design?

Before we get on to the best prac­tices, let’s explore why it’s such a good idea to imple­ment dark mode. You might view it as extra and unnec­es­sary, or you might feel that your busi­ness’s web­site design is per­fect the way it is.

For­tu­nate­ly, imple­ment­ing a dark mode fea­ture on your web­site does­n’t mean all the hard work you’ve put into your light web design is wast­ed. You can still pre­serve a lot of your brand­ing and design efforts.

Ulti­mate­ly, users will appre­ci­ate it. Peo­ple are gen­uine­ly con­cerned about eye strain, and you can make inter­net brows­ing a more com­fort­able expe­ri­ence for them. They might not explic­it­ly realise that you’re pri­ori­tis­ing their com­fort, but sub­con­scious­ly they’ll have an eas­i­er and more enjoy­able time on your web­site – per­haps stay­ing longer and explor­ing your web­site long enough to convert.

Users with visu­al impair­ments or light sen­si­tiv­i­ty could arguably appre­ci­ate dark mode even more. Dark mode, among oth­er web design adjust­ments, is part of some­thing called web acces­si­bil­i­ty and your web­site can even get in legal trou­ble for not being acces­si­ble enough. So, don’t under­es­ti­mate the pow­er of mak­ing rea­son­able adjustments.

A final con­sid­er­a­tion is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that your web­site might look quite mod­ern and styl­ish in dark mode. Not only is a dark colour palette syn­ony­mous with sleek­ness, but it will also make your brand come across as con­tem­po­rary if you keep up to date with cur­rent design trends.

Yes, imple­ment­ing a dark mode requires extra devel­op­ment and design work. Plus, you’ve got to guar­an­tee it’s done to a good qual­i­ty across all devices and browsers. How­ev­er, we think it’s a good invest­ment into acces­si­bil­i­ty and stay­ing cur­rent (here at pur­ple­plan­et, we are clear­ly advo­cates giv­en our own dark mode and oth­er acces­si­bil­i­ty features!).

So, let’s get into how you can pull off dark mode optimally:

7 best practices for implementing dark mode into your web design

1. Remain readable and accessible

You want to ensure that all your vis­i­tors can com­fort­ably inter­act with your web­site. In terms of read­abil­i­ty, avoid using pure white text on black backgrounds.

This stark con­trast can cause eye strain, despite the back­ground being dark. Instead, opt for soft­er off-whites or light greys, which are gen­tler on the eyes. Addi­tion­al­ly, use a com­fort­able line height and font size to make text eas­i­er to scan, espe­cial­ly for long para­graphs. Head­ings, sub­head­ings, and body text should have clear visu­al hier­ar­chy to help users nav­i­gate con­tent quickly.

High con­trast between text and back­ground is cru­cial, but too much con­trast can be as prob­lem­at­ic as too lit­tle. Dark mode should accom­mo­date users with visu­al impair­ments, such as colour blind­ness or low vision. This includes pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient colour con­trast between ele­ments, espe­cial­ly for but­tons, icons, and links.

Top tip: Con­sid­er how your cho­sen colours affect colour­blind users by test­ing the site with colour­blind sim­u­la­tion tools.

Addi­tion­al­ly, ensure that text remains read­able with screen read­ers, and all func­tion­al ele­ments, like forms and but­tons, are acces­si­ble via key­board nav­i­ga­tion. Offer­ing cus­tomi­sa­tion options, such as adjustable con­trast lev­els or a tog­gle for dark mode, can fur­ther enhance acces­si­bil­i­ty for a wide range of users.

2. Ensure functionality isn’t compromised

When you arrive at the stage in this process of adapt­ing UI ele­ments for dark mode, it’s impor­tant to bal­ance aes­thet­ics with func­tion­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, but­tons and inter­ac­tive ele­ments need to remain dis­tinct against dark back­grounds and you should use con­trast­ing colours, sub­tle bor­ders, or shad­ows to ensure vis­i­bil­i­ty, mak­ing sure hov­er states and focus indi­ca­tors stand out.

For forms, use light back­grounds for input fields and ensure text is read­able. Plus, high­light error mes­sages with clear, con­trast­ing colours.

Icons and nav­i­ga­tion menus should be adjust­ed with lighter or invert­ed colours so they don’t blend into the back­ground, and active states should remain easy to iden­ti­fy. Make sure you avoid clut­ter­ing the lay­out, which can be more over­whelm­ing in dark mode.

3. Don’t lose your branding

Under­stand­ably, some busi­ness­es wor­ry that their brand iden­ti­ty will get lost if they cre­ate a dark mode for their web­site. How­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble to pre­serve your brand’s visu­al iden­ti­ty. Here are our tips to do so:

• Instead of com­plete­ly over­haul­ing brand colours for dark mode, adapt them to suit the dark­er back­ground. For exam­ple, if your brand uses bright colours, con­sid­er using slight­ly toned-down ver­sions that main­tain the essence of the brand with­out becom­ing too harsh in the dark­er set­ting. Key brand colours should remain con­sis­tent but with appro­pri­ate adjust­ments for bet­ter leg­i­bil­i­ty and aesthetics.
• The busi­ness logo is one of the most impor­tant brand­ing ele­ments, so it should always remain clear and promi­nent. If your logo is nat­u­ral­ly dark, cre­ate a lighter ver­sion specif­i­cal­ly for dark mode. This pre­serves brand recog­ni­tion with­out sac­ri­fic­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty, ensur­ing that the logo still stands out in the dark-themed environment.
• Font styles and sizes are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent brand voice. In dark mode, ensure that typog­ra­phy still reflects your brand’s iden­ti­ty. Don’t switch fonts or dras­ti­cal­ly change their appear­ance; instead, make sure the text is read­able by adjust­ing font colours or weights while keep­ing the core design intact.

4. Optimise images and logos

When cre­at­ing a dark mode for your web­site, you want to ensure its images and logos remain clear, visu­al­ly appeal­ing, and aligned with your over­all design. It can be tricky, though, because dark back­grounds can affect the vis­i­bil­i­ty of images and logos, espe­cial­ly if they have dark ele­ments or lack contrast.

Here’s what we recommend:

• For logos, using PNGs with trans­par­ent back­grounds ensures they seam­less­ly blend into both light and dark modes with­out the need for sep­a­rate ver­sions. This avoids the awk­ward appear­ance of white box­es around logos in dark mode.
• If your logo is pri­mar­i­ly dark, it might get lost on a dark back­ground. Con­sid­er cre­at­ing an alter­nate, lighter ver­sion of the logo specif­i­cal­ly for dark mode to main­tain brand vis­i­bil­i­ty and recog­ni­tion. Some brands invert their logos or adjust the colour palette slight­ly to fit the dark theme.
• Add sub­tle bor­ders or shad­ows around images and logos when nec­es­sary to help them stand out against the dark back­ground. This can pre­vent images from blend­ing into the page too much and becom­ing dif­fi­cult to discern.
• Ensure that images used on dark back­grounds have enough con­trast so that their details are vis­i­ble. Dark­er images may need light­en­ing, or spe­cif­ic adjust­ments to their bright­ness and con­trast lev­els, to pre­vent them from appear­ing too dim or blend­ing into the background.

5. Don’t go overboard

When imple­ment­ing dark mode, busi­ness­es should strike a bal­ance between aes­thet­ics and usabil­i­ty, avoid­ing the temp­ta­tion to go too extreme with design choices.

One com­mon mis­take is using true black too heav­i­ly across the entire inter­face. While it may seem sleek, true black cre­ates harsh con­trasts with oth­er ele­ments, which can lead to eye strain and make text hard­er to read. Instead, using soft­er dark shades like deep greys or char­coal can pro­vide a more com­fort­able view­ing expe­ri­ence and cre­ate a smoother con­trast between the back­ground and lighter elements.

Sim­i­lar­ly, when using sub­tle high­lights, busi­ness­es should avoid overus­ing bright, neon-like colours for accents, links, or but­tons. In dark mode, these colours can quick­ly become over­whelm­ing and distracting.

Instead, mut­ed high­lights and soft tones pro­vide empha­sis with­out dis­rupt­ing the over­all flow of the design. The goal is to sub­tly guide users’ atten­tion with­out over­whelm­ing the sens­es, cre­at­ing a cohe­sive and pleas­ant user expe­ri­ence that enhances read­abil­i­ty and navigation.

6. Give users the option

Giv­ing users the option to switch between light and dark modes will per­son­alise and enhance their expe­ri­ence. On purpleplanet.com, you can swap between modes with our handy sun/moon tog­gle at the top right of your desk­top screen (or via the menu on phones and tablets).

Offer­ing man­u­al con­trol allows users to tai­lor the inter­face to their own pref­er­ences. Addi­tion­al­ly, pro­vid­ing an auto­mat­ic tog­gle based on device set­tings can stream­line the expe­ri­ence, seam­less­ly adjust­ing the mode to suit users’ needs with­out them hav­ing to change it manually.

Includ­ing a sim­ple switch in the web­site’s inter­face makes it easy for users to swap between modes at any time, offer­ing a flex­i­bil­i­ty that can boost acces­si­bil­i­ty and user sat­is­fac­tion. This is anoth­er way your busi­ness can show how it pri­ori­tis­es its web­site visitors.

7. Test your efforts

Test­ing dark mode on dif­fer­ent devices is essen­tial to ensure that the design looks con­sis­tent and func­tions smooth­ly across var­i­ous plat­forms, screen sizes, and technologies.

Start by check­ing how dark mode appears on both desk­top and mobile devices. Ensure that ele­ments like but­tons, text, and images main­tain clar­i­ty and are eas­i­ly dis­tin­guish­able on all screen types, where colour con­trasts may vary. Test across mul­ti­ple browsers (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Fire­fox) and oper­at­ing sys­tems (e.g., Win­dows, macOS, Android, iOS) to ensure com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and con­sis­tent performance.

You might also exam­ine the user expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent light­ing envi­ron­ments, like bright day­light and dim set­tings, to ensure dark mode remains read­able and visu­al­ly appeal­ing. Don’t for­get to check how dynam­ic ele­ments, ani­ma­tions, and third-par­ty inte­gra­tions behave in dark mode, ensur­ing noth­ing breaks or looks out of place.

Final­ly, per­form acces­si­bil­i­ty checks for users with visu­al impair­ments by using tools to ensure the con­trast ratios are appro­pri­ate for all users. This kind of thor­ough test­ing will ensure every­one has a smooth and cohe­sive expe­ri­ence on your website.

Final thoughts

Imple­ment­ing dark mode on web­sites can enhance user expe­ri­ence, improve acces­si­bil­i­ty, and mod­ernise a brand’s dig­i­tal pres­ence. How­ev­er, to make it effec­tive, busi­ness­es must pre­serve read­abil­i­ty and ensure that UI ele­ments func­tion seam­less­ly across devices.

Prop­er atten­tion to acces­si­bil­i­ty, such as ensur­ing ade­quate con­trast, sup­port­ing screen read­ers, and pro­vid­ing cus­tomi­sa­tion options, ensures that the design is inclu­sive for all users. By thought­ful­ly inte­grat­ing dark mode, you can offer an expe­ri­ence that bal­ances style, com­fort, and func­tion­al­i­ty, meet­ing the diverse needs of your audience.

To get help with web design, site acces­si­bil­i­ty, and even cre­at­ing a dark mode reach out to us here at purpleplanet.

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