designing dark mode app

Over the last few years, dark themes have been the most requested features in app design. Last year, macOS launched Dark Mode and Google declared a universal widespread of Dark Theme at Google I/O 2019 Conference. Although it was once rare, now dark themes are the latest trends and have become widespread. If done correctly, dark themes have a lot of perks. They can be read more easily in low light. They lower eyestrain. They can highly eradicate battery consumption, based on the screen. To get the Dark Theme ready is important for a designer for his app. Nevertheless, it’s not easy to build a nice dark theme. You can’t just reuse colors or invert the shades. If you do, you will get the opposite of what you need. Designing dark mode incorrectly increases eye strain and makes it more difficult to read in low light. Both Google and Apple made the dark theme an important part of UI. This theme’s low brightness gives safety in dark ambiance. Hence, while designing dark themes, make sure to make it delightful, balanced, and readable. Why Should You Go For Dark Mode? In this blog, we discuss a few tips to guide you to designing a dark theme for your app. Before that, let’s know the importance of dark mode: A Popular Trend The dark mode is one of the most demanding design elements that have been trendy since the last year. It is developing day by day as per the current market demands. Prolongs Battery Life Dark mode of an application saves a device’s battery life. The dark mode works amazingly on OLED screens to prolong the device’s battery life, Google confirmed. Solves Health & Wellness Issues The apps which feature too much brightness are harmful to your eyes if used in the long run. Here come the benefits of the dark mode. It relaxes your eyes to open and work on applications in the dark, solving these health and wellness problems. Impacts of Unhealthy Dark Mode on Your Health When you are reading a white text on the black background, it creates pressure on iris as it opens up more and receives more light and deformation of the lens creates a frizzier focus in your eyes. This is known as Fuzzing Effect or Halation, which is one of the biggest challenges of dark mode app design. As the name denotes, unhealthy dark mode is harsh for your eyes due to its high contrast and they can stress them very fast. For instance, if you use your laptop or phone on the highest darkness, you already know how painful it is to read the entire text. As mentioned earlier, dark mode helps prolong battery life. So, it just affects the devices featuring the OLED screen. When users are exposed to this impact, they feel exhausted by their digital experience. This is why proper designing of the dark mode is required. Now that you know how unhealthy or improper design of dark mode impacts your health and wellness, let’s head on to the next phase of this blog! What Changes Apple Brought to Design Dark Mode on iOS 13? Using dark mode, Apple has returned the context of colors and UI styling in iOS. Let’s dig into the changes that Apple made for helping you design dark mode on iOS 13: System Colors Apple has brought nine predefined system colors that are supportive of dark system-wide appearance and dynamic. Hence, these colors modify to chosen interface styles. Semantic Colors To balance the feel and appearance of the iOS apps in both light and dark mode, Apple has brought semantic colors for usually implemented UI components. These colors don’t feature the optimal RGB value; they alter to iOS interface style directly. Moreover, these semantic colors help deal with the overlay color and text in the dark mode. SF Symbols In the Human Interface Guidelines, Apple provides over 1500 SF symbols for designers and developers for use in their apps. Automatically they look great in the Dark Mode, which is why they have been optimized for both dark and light UI. Blur and Vibrancy Effects Apple has launched 8 vibrancy effects and 4 blur effects with iOS 13, which changes to the iOS interface style automatically. Moreover, Apple has launched 4 vibrancy effects in iOS dark mode typography suit – 1 for separator and 3 in the overlay. How to Design Dark Mode for Mobile App Effectively To give you a healthy UI experience, both Google and Apple have focused on their dark mode design standards. However, as we mentioned above, not paying heed to the dark mode design theme can result in a poor experience. Thereby, you must follow the tips given below to design dark mode for mobile app effectively: Refrain from Using Saturated Colors Although saturated colors look amazing on light surfaces, they can vibrate against dark surfaces visually and make them more difficult to read. Hence, to make the contrast sufficient against the dark surface, de-saturate the main colors.saturated colors Go for using colors in the 200 to 50 range (those which are lighter tones) as they feature better readability on the dark theme surfaces. Lighter tones will not make your app UI less expressive, but they will maintain relevant contrast without paining your eyes. Make Distant Surfaces Darker One guiding rule is followed by the background colors in dark themes for UI elements: if the layer is closer to the user, the surface area becomes lighter. A light source is cast from above in this model that is analogous to an ambiance. If the layer is distant, it gets less light and recedes more into the background. The designer can be tempted to invert the present light theme while making a dark theme. Nevertheless, closer surfaces would become dark and distant ones would become light. By breaking physicality, this would feel unnatural. Rather, use just your light theme’s primary surface color. Then, invert the color to create your dark