🌓 How to Manage Light & Dark Theme Customization in Confluence

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Hello there! 

I'm Elena from Communardo Products.

As more teams adopt dark mode for its visual comfort and accessibility benefits, the way Confluence spaces are designed needs to evolve too. Whether you're a Confluence admin or designer, customizing the experience for both light and dark modes is now more important than ever.

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Here are some key strategies and configuration tips for supporting both theme modes effectively:

🎨 Use Separate Color Settings for Light and Dark Themes

Different visual modes require different color palettes. What looks great in light mode might lack contrast in dark mode. If your Confluence theme supports it, define distinct color settings for:

• Background and font colors

• Menu and link highlights

• Panel or box titles

• Global header and footer colors

This ensures readability and brand consistency across all display preferences.

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🖼️ Upload Matching Header Images for Each Theme

Light and dark themes render images differently. A header image with a white background may blend poorly into a light theme, while being too harsh in a dark one.

To ensure clarity and style in both modes:

• Prepare two versions of your header image (light-friendly and dark-friendly)

• Apply them respectively to each theme variant if your theme supports dual image upload

This small detail can make a big visual difference.

⚙️ Fine-Tune Key UI Elements

Consider adjusting specific UI elements that influence user navigation and interaction. Common options include:

Element	Why Customize It?
Menu font & hover colors	Ensures visibility and intuitive navigation
Themebar and footer colors	Keeps branding consistent and polished
Panel highlights and links	Improves usability and accessibility

💡 Why This Matters

Supporting both light and dark modes isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about accessibility, inclusiveness, and improving the overall user experience. Users now expect easy transitions between theme modes without losing usability or visual coherence.

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If you're working on Confluence design, it's worth exploring what your current theming solution allows in terms of dual-mode customization. Have you already implemented dark-mode-friendly theming in your Confluence instance? What challenges or solutions have you found helpful? Let’s share ideas below! 👇

[Mia Tamm]

Hi @ele 👋,

Thanks so much for sharing these practical tips—this is exactly the kind of guidance every Confluence admin needs as we embrace dark mode!

We recently rolled out a dual‑mode theme for our documentation space, and here are a few lessons learned:

• Color palettes: We defined separate CSS variables for primary/secondary text and background colors, which makes it super easy to tweak contrast in one place instead of hunting through dozens of UI elements.
  
  
• Logos & imagery: I created two versions of our company logo (one light, one dark) and used a small snippet of custom CSS to swap them based on the user’s theme preference. It really helps maintain brand consistency without manual effort.
  
  
• Macro styling: One challenge was ensuring third‑party macros (particularly index and calendar macros) didn’t default to white backgrounds in dark mode. We solved this by injecting a few extra CSS rules targeting those macros—happy to share snippets if anyone’s interested!

One thing I’m curious about: have you experimented with dynamically adjusting link hover states in dark mode so they’re always highly visible? I found the default blue sometimes lacks punch against darker backgrounds.

Looking forward to seeing what others have tried. Thanks again for kicking off this discussion! 😊

— Mia Tamm from Simpleasyty

[Elena_Communardo Products]

Hi @Mia Tamm🙌

Really appreciate your thoughtful breakdown—especially your point on macro styling, that’s a challenge we’ve seen too.

On the link hover visibility: you're absolutely right, the default blue can lack contrast on dark backgrounds. In our recent update to Enterprise Theme, we introduced separate color settings for light and dark mode—including hover states—so it’s easier now to fine-tune those interactions without relying entirely on CSS workarounds. That’s been really helpful for handling contrast issues more systematically.

Would love to see your approach too if you’re open to sharing!

Elena