Some people like to put their email software, apps, and devices in dark mode because it’s easier on the eyes, it reduces screen brightness and saves battery life, it can improve content legibility, and for some people, they just prefer the look of it.

According to Litmus, “Dark Mode is a reversed color scheme that utilizes light-colored typography, UI elements, and iconography on dark backgrounds”.

The impact dark mode has on your emails depends on the email client the contact uses – they each manage it in their own way. Here are some of the ways they adapt emails for dark mode:

• No colours are changed. The email is still viewed as you created it.
• It inverts some colours: The email client will look for light backgrounds and makes them dark and change dark text to light – they leave any dark backgrounds alone.
• It inverts all colours: The email client inverts dark backgrounds to light and dark backgrounds to light. Text colour is flipped too. This has the most impact on the look of your email.

The two easiest ways to improve the way your emails look in dark mode is to:

1. Use images that’ll work in normal and dark mode. This can be images with transparent backgrounds and light drop-shadows around dark text. Play around when designing your mail to see what it looks like with both.
2. Keep testing your emails. Before sending your email to your contact list, send it to a few colleagues and friends to see what it looks like in their email clients first. Make sure a few of them are on dark mode – particularly for the more popular email clients, like Gmail and Outlook. This is best practice whether you want to specifically want to test dark mode or not.