Impactful & Effective Black & White Website Design Inspiration
It’s no secret people are often drawn to black and white web designs. They’re often powerful, trendy and visually appealing. If you’re thinking about a website redesign for your business, you probably have designs in mind that you like, which may include the black and white color scheme. As a Des Moines web design and development company, we love collaborating with clients and hearing their goals and inspiration for their sites. Our designers are also trained in color theory to ensure the end result is a website strategically designed for each client.
Web Design Trend to Watch: Monochromatic Website Designs
A monochromatic website is different from black and white designs because they utilize color. A monochromatic color scheme is a palate composed of a single color and any tint or shade of that color from complete white to complete black. Monochromatic websites are minimal, but lively, and are becoming more popular.
The perceived simplicity of a black and white website design is misleading. Effectively using two shades to create visual appeal is harder than it looks. Whether or not your business is up for the challenge should be based on the purpose of your website. Each color conveys different emotions and evokes a different response from your users. You want to be sure your design is right for your business goals. When considering if a black and white website design is best for your business, the purpose of your website is the most critical factor to keep in mind. Black websites and sites with a white background each have their advantages depending on your goals.
Benefits of Black and White Website Designs
The simplicity and elegance of a black and white website design can have many benefits, placing it among some of the top web design trends in recent years. Black and white websites have high contrast, helping text and images stand out. If you want to showcase your business’s products on your website, you can easily do so boldly and innovatively with a black and white design. They also have fewer distractions, making it easier to convey messages to visitors. With that in mind, there is still much to consider when using a black and white design. Our web development experts cover more best practices to ensure an optimal user experience on your website.
Black Background Websites
Our Des Moines web design team is mindful of color psychology when creating a responsive web design. The color black is perceived as a strong, powerful color. Black websites can also convey professionalism, elegance and authority.
Web designers should be careful when creating websites with black background because too much text on a black background can quickly get overwhelming. When using a dark web design, it’s best to include more visual elements and keep your content to a minimum. The text on a black background website should be used sparingly because it’s much harder for our eyes to read white text on a black website than black text on a white background.
White Background Websites
On the color spectrum, white is known as a combination of all colors. Color psychology theories suggest it represents positivity, peace and simplicity, and encourages creativity. White backgrounds and products are often used to symbolize they are fresh, clean and simple. Apple always capitalizes on using white backgrounds and designs to advertise their newest creative products to reinforce color psychology theories and demonstrate their gadgets are innovative, simple and high tech.
For sites that have a lot of content, and especially a lot of words, it’s best to choose a website with a white background for a clean and easy-to-read look.
Top Examples of Black and White Website Designs
Even though the colors are limited, there are many creative ways to design unique black and white websites. Below we’ve included some of our favorite black and white website inspirations. These examples have a few things in common:
- They take advantage of the stark contrast and give balance to your website.
- Using black and white photos gives sites a classic look.
- They add a pop of color to the black and white websites to make callout buttons and important text stand out.
- Black websites bring in some gray tones for a bit less contrast.
Studio Bjork
This responsive website design company uses the diagonal website design to hint at the direction you’ll be traveling on the page. Instead of scrolling vertically, Studio Bjork highlights their clients and their design work as you scroll to the right. The black background of the website works well since the focus is on the interactive experience instead of written content.
Duft & Co.
This is a simple black and white landing page that lets you choose which side of this business you’re interested in. On Duft & Co. you can browse their treats on their Bakehouse site, or you can look at the menu for their Brickhouse restaurant. The clean layout serves its purpose by getting customers to the correct website while also clearly indicating this company specializes in two types of foods.
The Ordinary
This website’s black and white design is anything but ordinary! The black background is elegant and makes you think of a romantic, star-filled night, which would be the perfect time to eat at this gourmet seafood restaurant. The touches of gray along with the anchor and hook icons tie back to the nautical theme, since The Ordinary primarily serves seafood.
The Black Sheep Agency
The Black Sheep Agency is focused on encouraging change and making a statement, and we believe their bold black and white website does just that. They stay true to black and white designs throughout the entire site while adding bursts of color to highlight their different causes. We also love the website scroll animations that pop up as you explore their website.
Double Barrel
This black background website is an excellent fit for this powerful product. The Double Barrel device claims to be the perfect vaporizing experience with two barrels of oil instead of one. This black website offers an added sense of power to this sleek product.
Made By Sofa
Although Facebook purchased the Sofa team in 2011, they still use their website to explain the acquisition to their customers and users of their previous software and apps. The simple black and white website is straightforward and serves its purpose in communicating Safa’s move to their clients.
Melanie DaVeid
This black background website is actually a portfolio used by a talented UX designer. Melanie DaVeid created a responsive web design full of contrast and used color to separate and highlight her work.
Gipimotor
The people who service Ferraris and other classic cars needed a website that’s polished and grabs your attention. By using a black and white photo of a beautiful car, Gipimotor radiates sophistication and class. The design also has a black background overlay to give it more power and authority.
Salt & Pepper Agency
With a name like Salt & Pepper, it’s no wonder this responsive website development company chose a black and white website for themselves. They specialize in technical support and custom website functionality to help clients around the world launch development projects.
NexBank
This black and white website design was done for NexBank, a financial service company that offers commercial, mortgage and institutional services. The designers did a beautiful job using different elements, like motion and visual texture, to present their brand as a cutting-edge and sophisticated company.
Airnauts
The experts at Airnauts combine design and technology elements to create responsive websites and apps. Their black background website is the perfect fit to grab the user’s attention right away and convey power and professionalism. They also use some diagonals throughout the web design, drawing users down the page.
Dumbo Design
Although this is not technically a black and white website, it has similar characteristics that we like. This dark background website keeps text to a minimum and uses pink words and color accents to highlight relevant information as you scroll.
Let Our Des Moines Web Development Experts Help You Stand Out With Black And White Responsive Web Designs
As a responsive website design company in Des Moines, we’re always helping businesses find the right color scheme for their new websites and keeping Iowans up to date with the latest web design trends each year. If your team wants a responsive web design that will demand attention and take your business to the next level, reach out to our team of web designers today!
Mallory Suntken
Mallory double majored, earning her B.S. in Marketing and Management from Iowa State University. She writes SEO-focused content pieces, creates effective digital marketing campaigns and executes social media and SEO campaigns to drive traffic back to clients' websites. Mallory is always eager to learn more about the latest trends in SEO and all things digital marketing and loves taking on new challenges. She has been featured in several blogs for her social media and content marketing expertise.