Why Gift Card Colors May Look Different in Dark Mode

When designing gift cards, we aim to ensure that colors remain clear and readable across different devices. In most cases, gift cards display correctly—especially when the user’s device is using light mode.

However, visibility issues may occur only when dark mode is enabled on the user’s device.

How Dark Mode Affects Gift Card Appearance

Dark mode is a user-controlled, system-level setting on mobile devices and operating systems. When dark mode is turned on:

• The system automatically adjusts or modifies colors

• Backgrounds, text, and images may be altered to match dark mode preferences

• These adjustments are handled by the device itself, not by the app

If the device remains in light mode, the gift card will display as designed and remain fully legible.

Why We Can’t Fully Control Dark Mode Rendering

At the moment, we’re unable to control how colors are transformed when device-level dark mode is applied. Specifically:

• We cannot define separate colors for light mode and dark mode

• We cannot predict exactly how each device will convert colors in dark mode

• The same design may appear differently across devices and platforms

Because of this, we must choose a single color scheme that works as well as possible in both modes.

Why This Happens Mostly on Mobile

Mobile devices often apply stronger system-level dark mode adjustments compared to desktop environments. As a result:

• The gift card may look fine on desktop

• The same gift card may have reduced contrast on mobile only when dark mode is enabled

Our Design Approach

We carefully balance colors during the design process to achieve the best possible readability across both light and dark modes. While we strive for consistency, some variations in dark mode are unavoidable due to system-level limitations.

Summary

• Gift cards display correctly in light mode

• Visibility issues may occur only when dark mode is enabled

• Dark mode behavior is controlled by the user’s device, not the app

• We can only select one color scheme that works across both modes

In case you have any further concerns, please feel free to drop us an email at support@govalos.com