Is Dark Theme Good for Your Eyes

By Xah Lee. Date: 2024-02-12. Last updated: 2025-08-01.

What is Dark Theme

Dark Theme use black color for background and white color for text. It is for computer display.

here's dark theme setting in Microsoft Windows:

here's dark theme in programing code:

At night, when lights are off and wife sleeping, you want dark background. That way, no glowing room, no disturbing wife.
Some display tech, the OLED display, use less energy when colors are black (no light). so dark theme is useful to save battery on some phones or laptop computer.

Dark Theme long term is harmful to your eyes.
Human eyes are designed to see things under sunlight, hunting or planting. Human eyes are not optimized to see glowie things at night.

When you have dark theme on, one most annoying thing is when some windows are white background. That shocks your eyes.

you run into this problem often. most websites do not support dark theme.

and on Microsoft Windows, many app does not.

Normally, just dont.
At night, turn on blue-color filter instead. Called night light. Available on Windows and Mac.
if your phone has OLED display tech, and is concerned about battery life, use dark theme.

2022-07-21

One of the issue is to decide if you really want your site to support dark theme.

Dark theme appears to be a fad. Scientific studies seem to suggest, black text on white is actually better for your eyes, and lets you read faster.

Note, none of the major text-heavy sites support dark theme.

the following sites do not support dark theme: