Before you invest in dark mode

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Before you spend anything on dark mode, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• Pure black on pure white is harsher than a slightly softened pair
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

Warning signs

Respect the visitor's system preference before your own default. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Shadows stop working in dark mode, so borders carry the depth. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

How to tell if yours is fine

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about dark mode before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Respect the visitor's system preference before your own default — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.