Dark Mode Email Design: Marketing Benefits & Best Practices

One notable digital trend is dark mode interfaces across various devices and apps—including dark mode for email. Users increasingly prefer this setting, with 34% adopting dark mode in their email apps by August 2022, per Litmus’ Trends in Email Engagement report. Ensuring email designs appear appealing in this format poses a challenge for marketers and designers. This comprehensive guide covers dark mode basics, how it works with email clients, and best practices for designing emails for dark mode.

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What Is Dark Mode?

Dark mode is a darker color setting for low-light or nighttime circumstances. This conversed color setting uses light-colored typography, UI features, and icons or graphics on dark backgrounds. From Apple’s OS to apps like Instagram, Teams, or Facebook Messenger, the most popular operating systems and apps now allow users to transition to Dark Mode.

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Why Are Users Choosing Dark Mode?

1. It’s easier on the eyes, especially in low light, reducing strain.
2. It helps save battery by dimming the screen.
3. Light text on a dark background can make content easier to read.
4. Some users like how sleek and modern Dark Mode looks.
5. It keeps what's on your screen more private by making it harder to see from a distance.

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How Does Dark Mode Work With Email?

Dark mode will not be consistent across your email marketing, causing variations in how emails appear. Opening an email in one client, like Gmail or Outlook, might differ significantly from one another. Therefore, the best practice for email design is to make sure it looks good in both light and dark mode.

1. No Color Alteration: Some clients, such as Apple Mail, keep HTML email colors unchanged in dark mode.
2. Partial Color Inversion: Outlook identifies light-background areas with dark text, inverting them for a "fully dark mode" appearance, while leaving already dark sections unchanged.
3. Full Color Inversion: Clients like Gmail (iOS) invert all email colors, turning dark components into light tones, and affecting designs without enabling precise dark mode.

To understand what this means for your designs, we sent the same email to three different email clients, each using dark mode.

Dark Mode Email Design Best Practices

1. Optimize Logos & Image Files: Since email builders default to light mode, consider PNGs with dark elements—they won't invert automatically. Add light-colored or translucent outlines to ensure visibility.
2. Choose High-Contrast Elements: Opt for high-contrast colors for all elements to guarantee legibility, especially for backgrounds and fonts affected by dark mode.
3. Implement Media Queries: Use CSS queries to customize elements for dark mode, though this isn't effective for full-color inversion in some email clients.
4. Test Across Email Clients: As we’ve seen, dark mode varies across email clients; test your design on multiple platforms and adjust accordingly.
5. Prioritize Accessibility: Due to the limitations of full-color inversion, it’s important to emphasize readability across different devices and clients.

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Integrating dark mode into email design is crucial for improving user experience, accessibility, and brand credibility. With these email marketing best practices, you can craft newsletters that smoothly adapt to both light and dark modes, ensuring a consistent, appealing experience for your audience. Want help from the experts? Delicious Digital’s graphic design and email marketing professionals are here for you. Contact us today!