6 Tips For Better Dark UI Design | Dark Mode

Dark UI design is harder to pull off than you may think – here are my 6 TOP TIPS for better dark UI designs – create the perfect dark mode.

Learn how to tame dark UI design and build an amazing-looking dark mode website with these tips that you can add to your designs instantly.

Accent Colour

One of my favourite methods of working with dark designs is to focus my attention on the main accent colour and use that to add some focus to the key parts of my designs.

In this example, we’ll use the sea foam green colour that I’ve chosen for the design. We can use this to draw attention to the key focal points or call to actions elements in our card design.

Using accent colours in UI design

This helps draw the eye and focus attention on the call to action button, but we could just as easily use it to draw attention to the article title and potentially remove the need for a button altogether.

Do bear in mind it’s not just about the UI, we also need to ensure all our design decisions focus on the user’s experience or UX.

Better Shadows

Shadows are a great way of adding a sense of 3 dimensionality to your designs, but if you’re used to working with lighter designs, you’ll need to change your approach with darker interfaces.

The guidelines that you’re probably accustomed to needing to be ignored in favour of simply using black or as close to black as you need to create an effective shadow design.

Apart from that, the settings and shadow style remain predominantly the same.

Softer Colours (Reduce Contrast)

Try to avoid using stark or harsh contrast in your designs for key areas. For example, instead of using black for the background and white for the foreground, experiment with lighter or darker shades to provide smoother contrast.

Using softer shades to reduce contrast

In our example, let’s change the background behind our cards text panel and set this as a lighter shade of the background instead of using white.

This helps provide enough contrast to our design while making it easier for the eyes to read, especially on larger, more text-heavy designs.

Vibrant Colours

Strong colours are great but can have an unwanted effect in your dark designs. You can often experience strange strobing effects if you’re not careful.

I’d suggest using softer shades of your primary accent colour to reduce or completely remove this visual issue.

You can easily use a website like Coolors to quickly generate all the varying shades needed to compliment your original accent colour.

Light & Dark Mode

Instead of restricting your site visitors to only having a ‘dark mode’ design, why not provide the option of both a dark and a light mode?

This can easily be achieved using a simple WordPress plugin like WP Dark Mode (free plugin) or Darklup (AppSumo link).

These types of plugins make it relatively easy to offer 2 different designs and keep your site viewers happy.

A Different Type of Dark Mode

While we’re talking about Dark Mode, you don’t need to limit yourself to only using blacks & greys. Why not experiment with other colour combinations and their darker counterparts?

For example, you could easily use a great combination of blows to project a professional, business image while retaining the dark look and feel.

This can work incredibly well if you employ a monotone colour scheme and rely on shades to provide the visual hierarchy and separation that we’ve used our accent colour for up until this point.

Blue Dark Mode UI Design

Now that we’ve taken a look at a selection of ways to improve your dark mode designs, you should be more confident in designing eye-catching, professional designs and not limit yourself to a single choice.

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