25 Dark Web Design Examples for Inspiration

While dark backgrounds aren’t a great choice for every website, they can help to create a great-looking website in the right situation. Looking for black website design inspiration? In this post, we’ll showcase 25 examples of beautiful dark websites to help get the creativity flowing.

Hopefully, these examples can provide some ideas and inspiration that can be put to use in your own work when you are considering the use of a dark background. You may notice that certain types of sites, like portfolio sites and photography sites, tend to be a better fit with dark backgrounds. One of the main reasons for this is that these types of sites tend to rely more on images and photos for communicating with visitors, as opposed to text. While dark backgrounds can often make text harder to read when it is in longer sections, photos and graphics often look great on dark backgrounds.

Showcase of Black Websites

Justin Finley

UI/UX designer and developer Justin Finley has a beautiful portfolio site that shows off his work. Certain parts of the site, like the area above the fold, have a black background, while other sections of the site use a white background instead. The dark background is used very effectively, and the white background is used for sections that are text-heavy.

Ines Maria Gamler

Interface designer and illustrator Ines Maria Gamler also uses a design that combines dark or black background with other areas of the site that use a light background. Pages and sections that include a lot of text use a light background for easier reading, but other sections achieve a bold look with the black background.

Sage

Sage is a mobile app and its website uses a dark background with white text. Above the fold on the homepage, you’ll immediately notice a mockup of a smartphone with the Sage app installed. This is a simple one-page site that directs visitors to the download pages of the mobile app for iPhone and Android.

Tobias van Schneider

The website of Tobias van Schneider is mostly black and white, with some splashes of color added in certain places. The area above the fold on the homepage uses a black background with large white text.

Order

Order’s website uses a black background but still manages to incorporate plenty of color. Above the fold, you’ll mostly see white text and yellow buttons, but as you scroll down, more colorful elements are incorporated.

Ashcroft

The website of Ashcroft is somewhat unusual because the dark background is maintained throughout the site, including text-heavy pages. A background image is also used with that dark background.

Static Interactive

This portfolio website takes a bit of a minimalist approach. The journal/blog uses a light background, but the rest of the site features a dark background and light text.

PMD Group

The website of PMD Group uses a black background in combination with bright colors. The design makes use of the elegant black background, gradients (including text), and areas with white background.

Haptic

Haptic is an iPhone app the has a beautiful, dark website. As you scroll down the page, you’ll see a lot of text, several mockups of the app on an iPhone, and call-to-action buttons.

The Refugee Project

The website of the Refugee Project is pretty unique. As you can see in the screenshot below, the homepage is very minimal with text on a black background. Other parts of this site, like the map, also make use of a dark background.

Co&Co

Marketing consultancy Co&Co uses a dark background with a full-screen video on the homepage. Certain parts of the site use a black background and other parts use a white background.

McChillin

McChillin is the website of designer and developer Mike McMillan. His site uses a minimalist layout with a dark background. The site mostly just links out to his work and to his profiles on other sites.

PROWEB

PROWEB’s portfolio site uses a black background above the fold with a memorable illustration that makes the site stand out. This is a unique site that features an interesting design with some animation and effects that will catch your attention.

Evan Eckard

Designer Evan Eckard has a portfolio website that uses a dark background in some places and a white background in others. The homepage features the dark background above the fold, except for the white header with the navigation menu.

James Korczak

This website in memory of James Korczak uses a dark background and some really creative and interesting scrolling effects. Scroll down the page and see how it functions.

David Hellmann

David Hellmann’s homepage uses huge white text on a black background. Aside from the blog, the rest of the site also uses the dark ground.

Aluxion

This site is completely black and white with some hand-drawn illustrations and animation effects. About half the site uses a black background and about half the site uses a white background.

hellohello

The dark portfolio site of hellohello features a video on the homepage. The site maintains a dark background and white text everywhere, with ample use of photos and smaller elements that add color.

TM

The portfolio website of TM uses a black background on the homepage. Much of the rest of the site uses a white background for better readability of text.

Bind

Bind uses a dark background on the entire site with plenty of splashes of color added as well.

Visual Soldiers

The portfolio website of Visual Soldiers features a black background above the fold. As you scroll down, the background color changes. Text-heavy sections of the site use a light background, but the dark background is used to add boldness and elegance wherever possible.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of black websites and that it has provided some ideas and inspiration that can be put to good use in your own work.

You may also be interested in the other articles in this series:

Black Website Design: 25 Dark and Amazing Websites