For the longest time, I never liked websites, especially personal or blogging sites, that had a dark theme. They all looked terrible. Looking back I am sure they probably had way too high of contrast with white text with pitch-black backgrounds. But I can't pull them up so I don't remember details.

All I remember for years was that dark themes were mostly terrible. Even more so for personal blogs.

Today, I feel like I could be swayed on that decision. I have been using the dark theme for DEV and I like it, despite the fact I think there could be some subtle improvements (I am not a designer so I may not be the right to ask what those would be). But with the changes in making editors dark themed, browsers, terminals, discord, and many more; I feel like dark themes could have a better chance.

But that feeling is hard to shake.

Why do you think that dark themes are good (despite light text on dark background supposedly being easier on the eye)? Dark themes also have the problem of being harder to see in bright light, usually on phones/tablets when outside.

So how would you change my mind on dark themes on sites being terrible? What are sites that have great themes with good visibility of the content? And why do they always feel so much worse for a personal blog, product, or marketing sites (I used to work for a company with a dark themed marketing site and nobody internally liked it)?