PSA: That super dark gray background I tried looked great on my monitor but not on phones

Spent a week building a dark mode design that used #121212 for the background. Looked perfect on my OLED laptop screen. Then my client tested it on their 3 year old iPhone and the text was basically invisible. Different screens handle black levels way different. Anyone else run into this with cheaper phone displays?

3 comments

3 Comments

nina8341mo ago

Is that a common problem with non-OLED screens?

paigewood1mo ago

Yeah "common problem with non-OLED screens" is exactly it. LCD screens and older OLEDs have way worse contrast ratios and black levels. That #121212 you used looks almost black on a good OLED but on a cheap LCD it's like a washed out dark gray with no depth. Plus the color calibration on budget phone screens is all over the place so your carefully chosen dark blue or gray can look totally different. I've started testing my dark mode designs on at least five different devices before shipping. A side by side comparison of an iPhone 8 and a Samsung OLED shows you how much the same hex code can change. You basically have to design for the worst screen your users might have, not the best one.

joseph_west5918d ago

That's backwards, OLEDs are the ones with perfect blacks while LCDs always have that gray glow.