Benefits of dark mode on the web

In today’s digitally driven world, our screens have become an integral part of our daily lives. From work to play, we spend countless hours staring at our devices. While the convenience of digital technology is undeniable, constant exposure to bright screens can strain our eyes and disrupt our sleep.

Introducing Dark Mode

Dark mode, a user interface that inverts light and dark colors on the screen, has gained considerable popularity in recent years. By reducing brightness and contrast, dark mode offers many benefits for both users and website and mobile app owners:

Reduced eye strain

If you’re staring at your monitor late at night or in a dimly lit environment, a brightly lit screen can be quite distracting. Dark mode typically greatly reduces brightness and glare, offering a softer, more comfortable environment for your eyes.

Energy efficiency

In addition to being easy on your eyes, dark mode can also extend battery life. For devices with OLED or AMOLED displays, which are commonly found on phones and tablets, dark mode significantly increases battery life because the display doesn't require as much power to illuminate as it would when using a traditional white background.

Better sleep

Dark mode is especially useful at night because it reduces the amount of blue light that screens emit. This can not only contribute to better sleep quality, but also positively impact overall health and well-being, especially when used regularly.

More focused audience

Dark mode minimizes visual distractions and fatigue, allowing viewers to better focus on the content you want to present to them on your website. For content creators, this means greater audience engagement, whether you’re sharing text, visuals, or creative projects.

Modern Look

Dark mode gives your website a sleek and professional aesthetic that is not only visually pleasing, but also modern and stylish. This look is becoming increasingly popular among users and designers.

Most common mistakes in implementing dark mode:

Implementing dark mode seems like a simple matter at first glance. After all, it’s just a matter of swapping the colors, right? Unfortunately, the reality is a bit more complicated, and a poorly implemented dark mode can worsen the user experience rather than improve it. Here, we’ll take a look at the most common mistakes developers make and show you how to avoid them.

Flickering:

Probably the most annoying mistake is flickering, which occurs when a page first loads in light mode and then switches to dark mode after loading CSS or JavaScript. This effect is especially annoying at night, when a sudden flash of white can be very unpleasant for the user.

Unset scrollbar colors:

Another often overlooked detail is the appearance of the scrollbar. If the scrollbar colors are not adjusted in dark mode, they can be distracting and disrupt the overall impression. After all, if a user does decide to go dark, there shouldn't be a very bright white strip on the side of the screen.

Contrast and readability: Balance is key

Insufficient text contrast is a common accessibility issue. Even in dark mode, it's important to ensure that there is sufficient contrast between text and background.

Images that are too bright

Images that look good in light mode can be too bright and distracting in dark mode. I often don't have direct control over the content of images, especially if they are user-uploaded images or content from external sources. However, there are ways to work around this issue.

Only two modes

I see this mistake constantly. You go on a website and there's at least a dark mode, but it is just a switch capable of changing dark/light mode. But that's just not enough. For a proper dark mode implementation, such a switch needs to have three states:

• Light mode
• Dark mode
• System default (automatic)

These days, every device has a global settings of whether user wants to have a light or a dark mode. Websites and applications have access to this settings and should abide by it. Websites that have dark mode capability should be automatically set to dark mode, if user specified this in their devices settings. Many websites completely ignore this fact. Only then should website allow users to change this fact.

Summary

Properly implementing dark mode requires more than just swapping colors. The important thing is to avoid mistakes and provide the user with a pleasant experience viewing your content. If you are interested in a website with a high-quality dark mode, please feel free to contact me.