Now taking new projects, limited availability each month.
THOUGHTS / BEGINNERS GUIDE 15 Oct 2025 8 MIN READ

What Is Website Dark Mode and Does Your Site Need to Support It?

There is a particular experience that has become familiar to anyone who spends time online after dark: you click a link, a page loads, and a blazing white background floods the room in a way that makes you reach for the brightness slider. Most devices now offer dark mode as a standard setting, and a significant number of users have it on permanently. The question for your website is whether it can meet them where they are.

Dark mode shows a website with a dark background and light text instead of the traditional white background with dark text. It is easier on the eyes in low-light conditions and is preferred by a large proportion of users, especially on mobile. As of 2026, most modern devices and browsers can request dark mode automatically, and websites can respond to that preference. For a small business website, supporting dark mode is increasingly expected rather than optional — particularly for audiences who are tech-savvy or browse at night. On platforms like Wix and Squarespace, dark themes are available but automatic dark mode switching requires manual configuration. On custom-built websites, a developer can use CSS to respond to the device setting automatically. GitFoundry websites include a built-in day/night toggle so visitors can choose their preferred mode.

There is a small, familiar discomfort that arrives when you open a website late in the evening and the screen suddenly blazes white into a dim room. Your eyes flinch. You turn the brightness down. You wonder, briefly, whether this website was designed with any consideration for when you might be reading it. This is the experience that dark mode exists to prevent — and it is one that a growing proportion of your visitors arrive with already solved, at the device level, because they have enabled dark mode and expect the websites they visit to honour that choice.

Why So Many People Use Dark Mode

Dark mode became widely available when Apple and Google added it to iOS and Android in 2019. Since then it has become one of the most widely used device settings across phones, tablets, and desktops. Three reasons account for most of its popularity:

  • It is easier on the eyes in low light. Reading a bright white screen in a dark room causes eye strain. A dark background with lighter text produces much less contrast against a dim environment, which most people find more comfortable for evening and night-time browsing.
  • It saves battery on OLED screens. Most modern smartphone screens use OLED technology, where dark pixels use significantly less power than bright ones. Browsing a dark website on a phone with an OLED screen uses noticeably less battery than browsing a white one.
  • Some people simply prefer the look. Dark interfaces have become associated with a modern, premium feel — many design and technology brands use dark colour schemes for this reason.

Surveys vary, but estimates suggest that between 50% and 70% of smartphone users have dark mode enabled at least some of the time. For a business website, that is not a niche edge case — it is a substantial part of your audience, browsing in the conditions they actually live in.

What Happens When Your Website Does Not Support Dark Mode?

When a visitor who has dark mode enabled on their device arrives at a website that has not been designed to respond to it, one of two things happens — and neither is quite what you want:

  • The website appears in full white/bright mode regardless of the device setting. This is the most common outcome. The website looks fine, but to a visitor in a dark environment it can feel harsh or uncomfortable.
  • The browser forces a dark mode on the site automatically. Some browsers (particularly on Android) will apply their own automatic dark mode to websites that have not implemented their own. This often produces poor results — colours become inverted or distorted, images look wrong, and brand colours are affected in unpredictable ways. A website you designed carefully may look broken to a significant portion of your visitors.

Neither outcome is ideal. The first is merely uncomfortable. The second — the browser forcing its own dark mode on a site that was not designed for it — can make a carefully considered website look genuinely broken to a significant proportion of your visitors. Distorted colours and inverted images are not the impression any business wants to leave.

How Does a Website Support Dark Mode?

Two main approaches exist, and the best websites use both:

  • Automatic dark mode based on device setting. Modern browsers can detect whether the visitor's device is set to dark mode and tell the website. A well-built website can respond to this signal automatically, switching its colours to a dark scheme without the visitor having to do anything. This is done using a CSS rule called prefers-color-scheme. The visitor's preference is respected without them needing to press any button.
  • A manual toggle on the website itself. Some websites include a sun/moon icon (or similar) that visitors can click to switch between light and dark mode. This gives the visitor control regardless of their device setting. It is slightly more work to implement but gives the best experience — the visitor's preference is remembered for future visits.

The ideal website supports both: it reads the device's preference by default and also provides a manual toggle for visitors who want to override it.

What About Website Builders Like Wix and Squarespace?

Most website builders do not automatically support dark mode in the way a custom-coded site can. Here is the situation with the main platforms:

  • Wix. Wix does not offer automatic dark mode switching that responds to a visitor's device setting. You can choose a dark colour scheme for your entire site, but it will appear dark for everyone regardless of their preference.
  • Squarespace. Similar to Wix — you can build a dark-themed site by choosing dark colours in your style settings, but there is no built-in automatic light/dark switching based on the visitor's device.
  • WordPress. It is possible to implement dark mode on a WordPress site, though it depends on your theme. Some themes support prefers-color-scheme automatically. Plugins are available for adding a manual toggle, though results vary significantly between themes.
  • Custom-built websites. A developer building a site from scratch has full control and can implement automatic dark mode detection, a manual toggle, or both. This gives the most reliable and polished result.

Does Dark Mode Affect Google Rankings?

Dark mode itself does not affect your Google search rankings directly. Google does not use "supports dark mode" as a ranking factor. However, there is an indirect connection: if your website looks broken or uncomfortable to a large proportion of visitors who use dark mode, some of them will leave quickly. High bounce rates and short engagement times are signals that can negatively influence your rankings over time. Getting dark mode right is primarily about visitor experience, not search optimisation — but good visitor experience and good rankings tend to go together.

Does Your Small Business Website Need Dark Mode?

For most small business websites in 2026, having some form of dark mode support is worth doing:

  • If you are on Wix or Squarespace and happy with your existing design, the most practical step is to ensure your colour scheme looks reasonable in both light and dark contexts and to accept that full automatic switching is not available on these platforms without significant rework.
  • If you are commissioning a new custom website, ask explicitly about dark mode support — it should be included as standard in any professionally built site built in 2026.
  • If your current website is built in WordPress, ask your developer or explore theme options that include dark mode support.

You are unlikely to lose a customer directly because your website lacks dark mode. But you may be creating an uncomfortable experience for a significant portion of your visitors, particularly those browsing in the evening on their phones. In a competitive market, small frictions add up.

Frequently asked

Will dark mode make my website look less professional?
No — when done well, dark mode often looks more modern and premium than a standard light design. Many high-end brands, technology companies, and creative agencies use dark colour schemes as their primary look. The key is that the dark version of your site needs to be designed intentionally rather than just being a default inversion. An automatic browser-forced dark mode that distorts your colours looks unprofessional; a carefully designed dark mode looks excellent.
How do I check whether my website already supports dark mode?
The simplest way is to enable dark mode on your phone or computer and visit your website. On an iPhone, go to Settings → Display & Brightness → Dark. On Android, go to Settings → Display → Dark theme. On a Mac, go to System Settings → Appearance → Dark. Then visit your website in a browser and see how it looks. If it appears the same as usual (bright white background), your site is not responding to the device setting. If it looks noticeably different — either correctly dark or strangely distorted — your browser is applying automatic inversion.
Do images look different in dark mode?
Images with solid backgrounds (such as product photos on a white background) can look jarring on a dark website because the white background creates a bright box within the dark page. This is a genuine design consideration. Solutions include using transparent PNG images (the background becomes invisible), adding a subtle border or shadow around images to frame them, or choosing images specifically suited to your dark colour scheme. A good developer will account for this when building a dark mode for your site.
Can I build a website that is dark-only, with no light mode option?
Yes. Some brands choose a permanently dark design as their aesthetic. This is a valid choice and works well for certain sectors — creative agencies, nightlife businesses, technology brands, and luxury services often suit a dark aesthetic. The consideration is that some users find dark text on light backgrounds easier to read for long periods, so a dark-only site may be slightly less comfortable for older audiences or for content-heavy pages. For a short-format business website with relatively little text, this is rarely a meaningful issue.

We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use this site. No personal data is sold. Privacy policy.