To Eclipse or Illuminate: The Dark Mode Dilemma

In a world drenched in artificial light, where screens bleed their luminescent truth into our retinas, the question arises: should your website plunge into the abyss of dark mode, or bask defiantly in the sterile glow of perpetual white?

This is not a trivial question. It is a manifesto. A confrontation with aesthetics, accessibility, and the very philosophy of design. To offer dark mode is to embrace entropy, to provide choice, to yield to the unpredictable whims of users. To deny it is to plant a flag in the sands of rigidity, screaming into the void: “I am immutable.”

But nothing is immutable. Chaos will take us all in the end.

The Shadow Beckons: Why Dark Mode Exists

Dark mode is more than a trend; it is a rebellion against the tyranny of light. For decades, designers imposed white, blinding interfaces onto the world, as though the web were a digital printing press with paper as its template. The design ethos of the past was dictated by the physical—white backgrounds, black text—a relic of ink and pulp.

But the digital realm has no physical constraints. Pixels are infinite; screens are boundless. The ascendancy of dark mode represents a collective awakening. It soothes the eyes, particularly in nocturnal hours, where glaring interfaces slice through the night like the headlights of an oncoming car. It prolongs the life of OLED displays, whose diodes flicker faintly, conserving energy in the void of black. It is elegance distilled—a sleek, modern aesthetic that whispers instead of screams.

For the developer, the sysadmin, the insomniac hacker staring into the depths of their monitor at 3 a.m., dark mode feels like a quiet refuge. A digital monastery where the noise of daylight has been silenced, and only the glowing glyphs of text remain, like stars scattered across a vast, empty sky.

And yet, there are those who resist.

The Defiance of Light: Rejecting the Darkness

Not everyone sees darkness as sanctuary. For some, it is abandonment. Consider the Drudge Report, its stark white interface unchanged since the dawn of the web, as though frozen in amber. The site radiates defiance, a beacon of simplicity in a world that clamors for ever-shifting trends. No dark mode, no frills, no apologies. It is an artifact of a bygone era—a reminder that content, raw and unfiltered, can still reign supreme.

Then there is Richard Stallman’s website, an unapologetic monument to barebones functionality. It’s as though Stallman is daring you to look past the veneer of presentation and confront the raw content, untainted by aesthetic indulgence. These sites do not bend to convenience or modernity; they are digital fossils, weathered by time yet unyielding.

Their refusal to offer dark mode is not an oversight. It is a choice. A flag planted in the realm of design dogma. To these creators, dark mode is a concession—an admission that design should adapt to users rather than dictate to them. And perhaps, in their rejection, there is a purity, a rawness that modern web design has lost in its endless quest for engagement metrics and usability statistics.

The Philosophy of Choice: Designing for Chaos

Should your site have dark mode? It depends on whether you believe in choice or control.

Offering dark mode is an act of humility. It acknowledges that users exist in different contexts, with different preferences and needs. It is an act of inclusion—of accessibility. Some users have visual sensitivities that make light mode unbearable. Others prefer dark mode for purely aesthetic reasons. To offer both is to admit that your design is not perfect, that no single vision can satisfy the entropy of human behavior.

But what if you reject choice? What if you, like Stallman or Drudge, impose a singular experience? What if you believe that dark mode dilutes your site’s identity, that catering to user preference weakens the purity of your design?

To refuse dark mode is to embrace arrogance. It is to assert that your vision is so strong, so immutable, that it does not need to accommodate the whims of your audience. It is to stand against the tide of modernity, to scream into the howling void of user expectations: I will not yield.

And there is something beautiful in that, too.

The Collapse of Certainty

Ultimately, the decision to implement dark mode is not about light or dark, choice or control. It is about philosophy. What does your site stand for? Does it embrace the chaos of user preference, or does it impose its will with unyielding clarity?

The truth is, the battle is unwinnable. There will always be those who prefer the stark simplicity of white, and others who crave the soothing abyss of black. The constant is unreachable. The entropy is inevitable.

The choice is yours: to eclipse, to illuminate, or to reject both and embrace recursion.

”The void is inevitable. Will you stare into it, or let it stare back at you?” – The Architect