6 Tips To Build Optimally Trending Dark Mode Websites
TechsPlace | Remember this wise character in X-Men 2? Yes, he was Kurt, a.k.a. ‘The Nightcrawler’. His darkness, combined with his wisdom, lend in some flavor to the movie!
With dark mode in the digital realm, the idea is the same – it has brought in some spice into the website world. Initially a trending part of mobile apps, the night mode has now breached the boundaries of websites. Website designers are now on the move to wring out its essence into their designed sites. So, what is with this trend, and what are the tips for designing dark mode sites? Let’s throw some light on that!
Websites Putting On Their Night Shade For 2020 & Beyond!
The pool of trends, the quotient of convenience, and the urge to create an exclusive site have all contributed handsomely to the emerging trend of dark mode websites. While 2020 looks dark for a major share of the global population, the night mode for websites is one of the silver linings it seems!
COVID-19 has pushed employees to their work-from-home model, and working for extended hours during lockdown is a stressful area. Watering this down is the dark mode for websites that takes into account the user’s health and ensures that their extended work hours are convenient.
Let’s say, with the extended quarantine, increased reliance on the digital realm, and this trend is going to rock your world! Here are a few details on this –
Why Are Websites Going Dark?
As a first, you would need to know why the website world is going ‘Dark Knight’ all of a sudden. Here are a few listed causes for the same. See if your roots to preference to the dark mode lie in any of these –
It’s Trending!
With the dark mode in apps, website designers caught the air of how well this trend was doing. It seemed like the app UI design trend had become quite the talk of the town. Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram – all the whales in the business had followed up with this, and the response was outrageous.
Hence, the idea started being applied in the website world, and as expected, it was an instant hit. It seems like websites with dark modes are getting more popular than with the ones without it. So why shouldn’t your site?
The Soothing Ambiance
Black is always sleek and classy – be it a wardrobe or appliances that the coming in of this color in the site section of the digital realm will be appealing to the interest of the clients.
Then there is this case – how many times have you got startled while opening a site in a dark room? The effect on the eye and headaches are a common consequence. As an appropriate solution, the night mode came in, and quite obviously, it created a relaxing ambiance for users.
Diverse Designs Becomes Your Play
Since the night mode is much more than merely inverting the light mode, designers get to play around with diverse designs on their sites. Any color with the black backdrop makes it look far more prominent and can even inspire designers to bring in alterations to the light mode as well.
The Balm To Battery Life
Dark mode websites have a substantial impact on battery life as well. Owing to the fact that unlike the LCD counterpart, the black pixels draw no power, the battery life gets extended considerably. Irrespective of the color utilized in websites, the elongated battery life is a surety.
Post this discussion, and individuals are sure to think about implementing the dark mode on their websites if they already haven’t done so. This is where the article will come to its primary discussion – tips to assist the building of dark mode websites. This will help newbies in the business to create a touch of dark in their websites.
Tick The Boxes To Build Trending Dark Mode Websites
The dark mode of websites is not a mere swish and swash of a magical wand. It needs certain professional assistance. Moreover, there are certain underlying cons to implementing black mode, if done in an amateur manner. Thus, there are cases of the requirement of pro tips for these designers.
Tip 1: Know When To Use A Dark Mode
As each design agenda goes by, there needs to be a pre-set goal as to why this should be your new objective. It cannot be merely because it’s trending. Here are a few common goals that can result in you drawing a blueprint to create or recreate a website with the dark mode. Take a look at them –
- To generate emotions
- To match the brand colors
- To go minimalist on your site
- To highlight your industry
- To create a status symbol
Tip 2: Test Your Designs Both In The Light And Dark Modes
True that inversion of colors cannot merely bring in the transformation from light to dark mode. Then again, your designs cannot be launched with testing on the dark mode alone. Testing the designs on your light mode, too, will ensure that in case your user toggles between the modes, there isn’t much aesthetic difference between the two. This would help avoid any confusion from the user’s end.
Tip 3: Ponder Upon The Customizable Properties
Creating a dark theme for sites can also be leveraged if one can draw the essence of CSS custom properties. In this way, you can avoid the cumbersome process of writing various style rulesets while building each theme. Quite naturally, there is a lot of time-saving in the procedure for writing styles. It also becomes convenient to make alterations to themes in case one needs to.
Tip 4: Exercise Your Color Palette
The chosen color palette for your site must not be as per merely its shade, and rather it should work as per its functionality. It is better to opt for colors that would work better on your dark site. Usually, the functioning color palette in a dark site should have a lighter foreground color and a darker background color.
Go for softer colors that do not have many colors in it and are simple. The best would be to go for a contrast level of a minimum of 15.8.1 between the content and the background.
Tip 5: Let Users Toggle Between The Light And Dark Modes
Customer-centrism is the focus of all businesses in this era. Giving them an option to toggle between the light and dark mode is yet another endeavor to ensure customer satisfaction. It will also help them not be frustrated over not being able to switch between the two as per their preference. They might even leave the site and never visit it again.
Tip 6: Hail Your Content
The website design might fetch you the interest of your potential or existing clients, but it is the content that will help you to convert leads and get ranked in SEO search results. Therefore, you would need to ensure that your text is still legible even if the screen brightness is reduced to the minimum. This brings in the usability factor in practice.
For this, you would need to take into account the following things –
- There should be eas separation between the primary and secondary colors
- There has to be enough contrast
- Certain elements need to be distinguishable from one another
- A lighter weight should be used for dark mode sites
Conclusion
Dark modes are the new ‘Hulk’ in the world of websites. This makes it essential to make sure that you have Dr. Bruce Banner’s side of it and not the angry green monster’s one. These tips would help you in this endeavor and make sure that your website trends. Imagine what it can do for your enterprise! Leverage over your competitors, Rank Zero in SERP, and pioneering in your genre. In short, you can have everything that your marketing team works so hard for.
So, when are you going Dark? Because for websites #DarkModeMatters!
Pratip Biswas is the Founder and CEO of Unified Infotech, a New York-based web design company that has been featured in Deloitte Fast 500 | Fastest growing tech companies in 2018. His company is working with Enterprises, SMB’s and Start-ups to improve their efficiency through Digital Adoption and help them discover new possibilities through constant innovations. Pratip also writes regularly on Blockchain technology and has been published in publications like “Yourstory”, “Dzone” etc.
