Come explore the many moods of the black and white aesthetic. Despite sharing an identical color palette, an elegant tuxedo, a playful panda and a starry sky provoke vastly different emotions.
A black and white color combo is equally versatile when creating a website. The theme fits brands ranging from corporate conservative to in-your-face creative career portfolio. It’s expressed as predominantly white, predominantly black or mixed patterns that equally balance the two. It lends itself to numerous color variations including onyx, charcoal and porcelain. And it’s a design expression that’s anything but static or stagnant—just add a bold accent color from the latest web design trends or a hypnotic website animation design.
Scroll on for examples of black and white page designs built on Wix Studio, as well as black and white responsive templates that can kickstart your next Oreo-inspired masterpiece. Plus, the founders of creative studio Les Marteau share how to create a black and white website that’s engaging, dynamic and fit for your clients’ needs.
Create a responsive, black and white website on Wix Studio.
20 examples of black and white websites
1. Les Marteau
2. KlikArch
5. Anzo Studio
7. LUCI
9. Pixlspace
10. Eylon Malkevich
11. Roni Levi
12. Adam Shams
13. BulbHub
14. 10X HUB
15. CCA
16. Yara Farm
17. loom
18. Adi Weintraub
19. Violet Henderson
20. Diego Aguiar
01. Les Marteau
New York-based creative studio Les Marteau employs a variety of attention-grabbing techniques on their black and white website. Alternating between black and white for section backgrounds, the theme applies not only to text but also to images and videos. Les Marteau shows that even with only two tones, a website can feel dynamic and surprising thanks to loop animations and scroll effects.
See how Les Marteau creates sites with scrollytelling in this web design webinar.
02. KlikArch
This architecture and design studio uses black and white website design to enhance the colors, textures and angles presented in their projects gallery. Alternating typography styles and text-based scroll effects push the limitations of the two-tone color palette. For creative professionals in any industry, a monochrome site design will minimize any visual noise that competes with your portfolio imagery.
03. The Boathouse
For a black and white hero section with stopping power, look no further than The Boathouse. This creative agency effectively demonstrates the breadth of their work by immersing the visitor in an animated sea of black and white imagery from their campaigns. Giving the background images a soft filter helps the agency’s primary message take the spotlight. (By the way, this is also a great agency website example.)
04. Bodaghee Consulting
When using a black and white theme, an accent color can emphasize specific elements on a site, like on this consulting website by Bodaghee. Important information—including services offered, professional data and a CTA—attracts user attention, and a colorful custom cursor adds a playful surprise.
05. Anzo Studio
Anzo Studio’s site conveys cinematic drama with larger-than-life typography and a brand narrative that unfurls on the screen with the intensity of breaking news headlines. The monochrome color palette is all encompassing, using looping videos, scroll effects and entrance animations to lure visitors to take in every line.
Learn more: How to design a website
06. Visual Identity
Using black, white and shades in between, Visual Identity’s agency site seamlessly blends classic and contemporary styles. Building on the site’s foundational white text and black background, Wix Studio design effects, like mouse parallax, and various typefaces—like professional fonts and handwriting fonts—give the site a modern and professional feel.
07. LUCI
Featured on Wix Studio’s inspiration hub, this jewelry brand and online store, LUCI, showcases its colorful merchandise across a black and white website theme. The extra-large product and lifestyle visuals leap out, particularly on the store pages where the black background enhances each item’s unique hue (and entices visitors to add to cart).
08. BEC FURNITURE
A website can’t always do justice to product craftsmanship, like handmade furniture. But thanks to the black and white design of BEC FURNITURE’s website, the highbrow product photography shines—literally. Set inside a razor thin white grid, the black background accentuates each furniture piece’s curves, varying wood tones and glistening varnish.
09. Pixlspace
Pixlspace pushes the boundaries of a typical black and white website theme, employing a range of related colors in principal positions, such as a charcoal background and an ivory font. Subtle accents—note the occasional pop of red—mixed with powerful font treatments, like on the individual project pages, make the site feel curated and sophisticated.
10. Eylon Malkevich
Challenging the severity of a black and white website design with playful, colorful interactions makes this a memorable creative portfolio by Eylon. The extensive negative space kicks your curiosity into high gear, and the white-text-on-black treatment has hints of design nostalgia (1990s computer printers), offline textures (store receipts) and cutout collages.
11. Roni Levi
Though a black and white color palette has a classic, no-nonsense reputation, Roni Levi succeeds in creating a whimsical and uninhibited black and white portfolio. To juxtapose the site’s traditional typography, Levi mixes in animated GIFs, mouse parallax effects, custom cursors and sticky scroll effects, giving her project catalog dimension and intrigue.
12. Adam Shams
Adam Shams’s creative portfolio uses a white background to let his projects and personality dominate the screen. It’s a strategy that works well, particularly when Shams’s colorful mixed media fill the site’s sections alongside the site’s more muted typography.
13. BulbHub
Brazilian media company BulbHub, who rightfully refer to themselves as industry disruptors, bring fun to their black and white page with, well, disruptive orange accents. This approach truly “walks the walk”—jumping images and scrolling text marquees continue to disrupt (and tickle) visitors all the way down the page.
14. 10X HUB
If you want to dedicate your site to driving a single user action—like an event registration or a promotional sales purchase—follow 10X Hub’s example. Leaping out of the black and white design stillness, the electric crimson call-to-action and submission form are impossible to miss. A black and white website theme is not required to use this strategy for your site’s goals, but make sure your accent color bears a significant, jarring contrast to the primary colors of your page.
15. CCA
Referencing a community board or an events periodical, arts org CCA’s site uses a primarily white background with black linework to organize updates on events, exhibitions and articles. Plus, the grid-like structure creates a content hierarchy that visitors can easily follow to distinguish between new exhibitions and past events.
16. Yara Farm
Still working on your site’s full launch? A coming soon website can help build brand awareness in the meantime, and signals to your visitors that something big is on the way. Following the example of Yara Farm, the black and white website design and newsletter CTA are simple and effective ways to deliver a single message and grow the business’s contacts list. (Plus, the neon green accent color adds an unexpected twist.)
17. loom
Make your colorful products pop with a black and white website theme. loom’s site stretches the possibilities of black and white design, applying the tones to a product grid, a photo filter and a quirky icon pattern. This sets the stage for their vivid, rich product photography, highlighting the bright gradients of their packaging and the flavor profile of each drink.
18. Adi Weintraub
At first glance, a black and white website design has a bare-bones feel, that the site’s design and content are reduced to a minimum. That’s where the element of surprise plays a big role. Adi Weintraub’s portfolio loads with little fanfare. But hover over her projects list and the site roars to life—her works fill the page with color, confidence and motion.
19. Violet Henderson
A black and white website design can give an authentic printed media feel to your client’s site. Violet Henderson’s black and white writing portfolio guarantees that nothing distracts from her selected editorial works. The clean structure and simple navigation help visitors easily find exactly what they’re looking for.
20. Diego Aguiar
Diego Aguiar’s design portfolio acts as a black canvas for white-toned subtleties such as section dividing lines, text animations and mouse effects. This practice can add depth and surprise to the most simple color patterns or standardized layouts, and gives the portfolio a mature and disruptive quality.
Build your next website on Wix Studio.
10 black and white website templates
01. Artist Template
This responsive black and white website template for digital artists and designers provides a handful of different layouts for arranging artwork or other product imagery. The template features an about page, a sticky scroll effect and lilac-colored accents.
02. Electronics Store Template
Even if your store doesn’t sell electronics, this black and white website template can jumpstart your next eCommerce site with ready-to-go product pages, store categories and mobile-friendly product grids. Plus, your product images will stand out on the monochrome layout.
03. Hair Salon Template
Showcasing a range of tones including black, white, pewter and bone, this responsive website template can suit a variety of service-based businesses. Start building on this template to customize your price list, online booking details, customer reviews and more.
04. Interior Design Firm Template
Show off your client’s full-screen photography—say, for an interior design firm or modeling agency—in this photo-centric black and white website template. The highly visual dynamic gallery pages, presented with a parallax scroll effect, create a modern and engaging viewing experience.
05. Jewelry Store Template
This jewelry store template brings shoppers up-close to your product display with large photography, zoom-in hover effects and interactive image reveals. Ready-to-go with Wix Studio’s eCommerce features and useful extras—a shipping policy page, FAQs and newsletter sign-ups—you can quickly launch your store to start driving sales.
06. IT Company Template
No photography? No problem. Give your black and white website a touch of color with this template’s burnt sienna-colored accents. Created for an IT company website, this responsive design can flex across a range of service businesses thanks to its abstract illustrations, customer logo marquee and service booking feature.
07. Designer Template
A portfolio’s creative works grab attention thanks to this template’s clean white background and minimal black text. The homepage layout features a catwalk of portfolio imagery, whereas the index page lists the works in an archival, text-only format. (There’s also a custom cursor you can adapt to fit your vibe.)
08. Event Planning Company Template
This black and white website template keeps text to a minimum to tell a photo-centric story with oversized homepage imagery and dynamic gallery pages. And it comes with marketing essentials, like customer testimonials and a submission form for lead data capture.
09. Music Event Venue Template
A must for any events-based business, this music event website template comes with built-in ticket sales and an events catalog. The electric green secondary color adds personality and can be adapted to fit your client’s branding.
10. Marketing Consultant Template
Power up your next site with interactions and effects on this black and white website template. The single-page browsing experience is full of twists and turns, featuring sticky scroll effects and parallax mouse effects. And yet the layout is also fit for business, with variously structured sections to house a company’s messaging, performance data and case studies.
Bonus: Wireframes Templates
Starting from a wireframe template gives you total control in applying a black and white website design to a ready-to-go site layout. (Not to mention that these templates already include sticky scroll effects, entrance animations and more features that boost engagement.)
Create a Wix Studio site from your favorite template.
How to create a black and white website design
Five steps to creating an effective black and white website, from sisters Anna and Ros Martello, the founders of creative studio Les Marteau.
01. Decide if the color scheme fits your client’s brand
As seen in the website examples above, a black and white design theme can range from classic to contemporary. But don’t choose a color scheme simply because it’s versatile (or easy). One of the first tasks with a new client is to identify the essence of their brand—what the brand stands for—and then convey it through the site’s aesthetic.
Les Marteau used this process for creating their black and white agency website. They considered the essence of their brand—“sophisticated, minimalistic”—and focused on highlighting content without distractions. “Black and white allowed us to create a timeless aesthetic that resonates with the precision and elegance we aim to deliver in our work,” they shared with FWD.
02. Create a visual hierarchy that is more than white and black
When designing a monochrome site, explore the various hues derived from your primary color. For example, a black and white color theme can include shades of gray as dark as charcoal (HEX 36454F) and as light as gainsboro (HEX dcdcdc). Put these different colors to strategic use in your site design, such as accents that add emphasis or as alternating section backgrounds to distinguish between different messages.
“The key is to create a visual hierarchy where different shades guide the viewer’s attention through the content seamlessly,” says Les Marteau, noting that they experimented with various shades of gray to add depth and texture to the design. Example: “Subtle contrasts like pale gray text on a white background help maintain readability while still adhering to the monochromatic theme. Play around with Wix Studio’s fluid gradient feature.”
03. Identify the content you want to emphasize
For your site to meet its goal—whether its product sales or portfolio browsing—add visual cues that emphasize key content or CTAs along your visitor’s journey. In a black and white design, you need to emphasize specific elements through contrast, scale and motion. “We incorporated loop animations, transparent videos, transitions and subtle video elements to draw attention to key areas without disrupting the overall aesthetic.” Look at animated loops as an example. “They break the monotony and provide focal points that guide users through the site. Using different shades and layering of colors can also highlight specific sections or calls to action, making them stand out even in a monochromatic scheme.”
04. Make whitespace your friend
“Whitespace, or negative space, is essential in black and white designs,” says Les Marteau. In the absence of a diverse spectrum of colors to create visual breaks or differentiation, use whitespace to ensure your design feels clean and uncluttered. “Adding space between sections and paragraphs allows your content to breathe and helps guide users through your narrative as they scroll.”
05. Adjust for scale and dark mode on mobile
A black and white website design requires particular attention on mobile devices. Because monochrome designs feature subtle variations in color, this can compromise legibility on mobile dark mode or in scaled down proportions.
“It’s crucial that the contrast is effective across devices and screen sizes,” Les Marteau says. “We paid special attention to how elements like text and images scale down for smaller screens, maintaining the integrity of the design.”
As for the dark mode design: “We focused on inverting the color scheme where necessary while still keeping the overall feel consistent,” they say. “The challenge was to ensure that both light and dark modes offer a seamless experience, with appropriate contrasts to avoid eye strain and maintain readability.”
06. Be visually playful and diverse to help content stand out
Even without dramatic color contrasts, there’s no shortage of tricks and techniques to catch a site visitor’s eye. Les Marteau recommends designing your site with textures or patterns to add depth without color. Then, when building your site, find moments for motion. “Scroll effects, transitions and monochromatic videos can surprise and engage users, enhancing the experience while keeping the design dynamic,” they say.
See how to build sites with code-free animations and effects in this short video.
What makes a good black and white website?
The founders of Les Marteau share their criteria on how to create a great black and white website.
01. A clear focus
Les Marteau says focus is key in black and white design. “Guide the user’s eye to important elements by using shape dividers and varying text sizes, text orientation or sticky effects,” they say. “Bold black text or text mask on a white background can make key messages or calls to action stand out.” And that’s the beauty—and challenge—of black and white design: “the simplicity of the black and white palette ensures that the content remains the star, so your message must be clear and impactful.”
02. An established hierarchy
Establishing hierarchy on a black and white website is all about contrast and scale. In terms of contrast: “You can alternate between black and white to differentiate sections or layers of information,” they say. “For instance, use a white background for the main content area and a black background for the navigation bar or footer to create a clear separation of elements.” From there, you can play around with different shades of gray to add more variety and interest. As for scale, vary the weight of typography.
03. Dynamic elements: black
Movement is key to a dynamic black and white website. Some ideas: “Alternate the dominant color across different sections—like white backgrounds for one section and black for another—to create a rhythm that keeps the user engaged,” Les Marteau says. “Animation, scrolling effects and transitions also give a sense of movement and make the site feel more interactive.”
04. Playful design
Creative typography, hover effects, text marquees and transparent videos are all fair game in a black and white website. In fact, they’re a must if you still want a playful, modern vibe. To achieve this, Les Marteau suggests using hover effects to reveal hidden content or to slightly change the color scheme. “This not only enhances user experience but also adds an element of surprise that keeps visitors intrigued,” they say.
Get started on your next website with Wix Studio.