A practical checklist for dark mode
The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Run through this the next time dark mode comes up.
Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
The checklist
- Pure black on pure white is harsher than a slightly softened pair
- Respect the visitor's system preference before your own default
- Shadows stop working in dark mode, so borders carry the depth
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
The reason this keeps coming up
Pure black on pure white is harsher than a slightly softened pair. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
What this looks like day to day
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Three things worth confirming about dark mode before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Shadows stop working in dark mode, so borders carry the depth — 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.