18 October 2025 · 4 min read
Reduce contrast, do not maximise it
Pure white on pure black causes halation and eye strain. Off-white text on a dark grey surface reads better.
Aim for sufficient contrast rather than maximum contrast.
Elevation is expressed with lightness
In dark themes, surfaces closer to the viewer are lighter, not more shadowed. Shadow alone does not read on a dark background.
Build an elevation scale of surface colours rather than reusing the light theme's shadows.
Desaturate accent colours
Saturated colours vibrate against dark backgrounds. Reduce saturation and adjust lightness for each accent.
Test both themes at the same time — a single token set rarely serves both without adjustment.
Where to go from here
If you are weighing theming work for an upcoming project, the useful next step is usually a short scoping conversation rather than a longer article. Bring your constraints — budget, timeline, existing systems, and the team you already have — and the decision usually resolves itself in an hour.
We run these as a fixed-scope discovery session with a written recommendation at the end, including the cases where our advice is that you do not need us.
Working on something like this?
Send us the brief. We will tell you what we would build, what we would cut, and roughly what it costs.
Talk to us