50 Beautifully Dark Web Designs

October 26th, 2008 by Jacob Gube | 86 Comments | Stumble It! Delicious

Selecting colors for a site is one of the most crucial parts of web design. The color palette can evoke certain types of emotions in a user and sets the tone for the user’s experience while perusing the site. Websites with dark colors can represent "non-mainstream", "elite", and "unconventional".

The use of dark backgrounds also centers the attention towards the content, making it an effective theme for portfolios, image galleries, and design-centered sites.

In this collection, you’ll find some of the best dark-themed web designs. This is the second part of the "Beautiful Web Designs" series that starts off at "30 Beautifully Blue Web Designs".

Starbucks Coffee At Home

electricurrent

Pikaboo

TAKE THE WALK

Bird Malaysia

Elan Snowboards

Eye Candy

Mike Poss’ Rock Guitar Blog

The Statement

Nile Inside

Batman The Dark Knight in 3D

Ordered List

LaRedoute

BootB

B.N.WEISS

MyCacties

Traffik CMS

Riffs Music Academy

cyan

Meet the BigMan

Twelve Restaurant & Lounge Bar

AdaptD

Pixel Farm

Na vlastní nebezpečí

FAST EDDIE CHAMBERS

Elliot Jay Stocks

depthCORE

IDEO

Sascha Eggenberger

2Pitch

JUXT Interactive

Let It Bleed

okb

Viewzi

Rox

Training by Collective Idea

Level9 Design

Rabotilnica

Hamish Macpherson

Timothy van Sas

Incase

new {concept}

coda.coza

Dead Metropolis Recordings

Mad Detective

Chyrp

Backboard

Product Planner

Wacom Pen Collective

Krista’s Creations

What do dark designs mean to you?

Why do you think a designer chooses a dark color scheme? What emotions and messages do dark designs convey to the audience? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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86 Comments

Navdeep

October 26th, 2008

Nice list

Thomas | Brush King

October 26th, 2008

Nice, Thanks

Umar

October 26th, 2008

this looks pretty cool

Adam

October 26th, 2008

Nice list, thanks. It’s nice there is one web from Czech Republic :))

kushi

October 26th, 2008

i like this website color combination

Dan

October 26th, 2008

http://www.pzgi.com is another great one

Panther

October 26th, 2008

Mark my words, I’ll make it to one of these lists someday!

stan

October 26th, 2008

Why is goocoal.com not on this list !!!!

Seeds For Wealth Good Web Design

October 26th, 2008

Excellent list! There are so many great designers out there so passionate about their work it’s frightening.

Once again, excellent list!

Rodnei

October 26th, 2008

Mine is only a training with CSS, and is still under development. Take a look http://studioz.multiply.com

One day I’ll make one like these!

Farid Hadi

October 26th, 2008

Nice list.
A lot of these designs are really great.

Virat

October 26th, 2008

Very nice list.

Sam

October 26th, 2008

Sweet, I love these designs. Dark designs look so great, I can’t get enough of them.

Pims

October 26th, 2008

Glad to see some new designs. Nice list.

Nick

October 26th, 2008

Thanks for the inspiration.

John

October 26th, 2008

Ahhhh, what a satisfying blog post. Thanks!

I’ve always loved using dark backgrounds (like on my website, http://www.neardark.com - shamesless plug) as they tend to really make photography and typography pop on the screen.

Am thrilled to see someone gather up this nice list of examples.

Cheers,

John

Stag

October 26th, 2008

Very inspiring. I’m also a fan of this one: http://niid.to - dark and mysterious, with a humorous twist.

Steven Snell

October 26th, 2008

Looks like I’ll have to change my posting schedule for this week. I had a draft of dark websites waiting to be published. Oh well, nice collection.

liam

October 26th, 2008

Stop it! Too many great posts. You’re making the rest of us look bad. Especially me!

Love it, and recently been loving your site a lot more and more. Great stuff buddy.

Tung

October 26th, 2008

Nice list…

Danh ba web 2.0

October 26th, 2008

Nice list

Exdizajn

October 26th, 2008

Great list, my favorite is incg.nl

ying0216

October 26th, 2008

Nice collection Mmm

Andy Sowards

October 27th, 2008

Man! Great list! Some awesome sites in here, Still Can’t believe mine isn’t in there tho! ;) Its pretty dark!

insic

October 27th, 2008

nice designs. love it!

Marcelo

October 27th, 2008

a recommendation:

http://www.mekanism.com

design

October 27th, 2008

this one quite unique from Sweden
http://www.constructit.com

Dave Ellis

October 27th, 2008

Thanks for including the Riffs site!

James

October 27th, 2008

Really nice collection. IMO a couple of them seem a little bland but nonetheless a really nice demonstration of what can be done with the colour black!

Curvball

October 27th, 2008

Awesome collection, a few of those are in my top 10 list :)

Keep up the good work and hope to see some more classic posts like this from you in the future.

As for myself personally, I love dark design - it just feels right.

Robin

October 27th, 2008

Awsome designs, got inspiration from a few of them for my blog.

Rishi

October 27th, 2008

Very slick!

Justo

October 27th, 2008

I personally like http://www.ttthings.com a lot, but I guess it’s just a matter of taste cause I usually prefer dark on white websites.

JuanS

October 27th, 2008

I like them dark themes!

IhateDesign

October 27th, 2008

exist more words for that? no, only Wow!

great recopilation!

PureDezigner

October 27th, 2008

Great resource with perfect timing, I’m currently looking for ideas for a redesign of my current portfolio site: http://www.puredezigner.com. Thanks for the post!!

Salwa

October 27th, 2008

Great inspiration. Awesome list. Thanks!

Graeme

October 27th, 2008

A goo dlist of sites, and some inspirational ideas too. Even my own site is dark, although not for much longer as iI’m in the process of re-designing it.

iBeer

October 27th, 2008

cool list, thanks!
good work

Fifty Studio

October 27th, 2008

You left us off!? Terrible. Fifty Studio

Those other 50 are some mighty fine sites, too.

Brian

October 27th, 2008

One more perhaps? Kinetic Shadows

Kimberley

October 28th, 2008

tijuanaflats.com It’s a restaurant and an awesome web page especially since the burrito restaurant seems to be geared towards young people. I love the creativity of all of these sites.

elisa

October 28th, 2008

wow…they’re cool!

Azeem

October 28th, 2008

Great list - The Ordered List guys site is brilliant.

Time to shamelessly plug my own dark design (sorry!): http://www.azeemalim.co.uk

rogier

October 28th, 2008

Dark and portal

netzwahn

October 28th, 2008

Great second part of your “beautiful web design” series.
Thanks for your work

Content Writing Advice

October 28th, 2008

nice black list. dugg.

Santiago Sosa

October 29th, 2008

Nice list, there are many designers intimidated by dark color layouts, in the other hand I believe that if done correctly, a dark website looks very sophisticated.

http://www.alldigitalmedia.com

Mladen

October 29th, 2008

Was a site like twitter but with few categories like:
I love…
I think..
I hate..
on this list, i can’t find it but i loved that site :(

Simon

October 30th, 2008

Another one that’s good is http://www.redchilli.com

Anthony

October 31st, 2008

amazing work! check out my Long Island Web Design Company if you can.

Jernej

October 31st, 2008

I like Elliot Jay Stocks!

Mithun

November 1st, 2008

Great Site Designs … Nice.. ..

aronil

November 3rd, 2008

Great list! Honestly I don’t know why one would choose black except for maybe to be diff from the popular white bgs out there. Black to me gives more depth and also looks very artistic. Black in acting, allows you to be the plain canvas.. so maybe in that sense that’s why people use black bgs. Allowing others to interpret what you could possibly mean with your creative bg…. i’m rambling but it’s a thought :)