If Nostradamus were a modern-day web designer, we think he'd say transformation is on the horizon.
Yes, more transformation. With rapidly evolving technology like AI, digital design now exists in a constant state of iteration. New trends will build upon old trends, straddling the line between future-forward innovation and comfort-seeking familiarity. Others will push back entirely. Don’t worry—they’ll still embody the principles of good website design. But they’ll also embrace nostalgia and nature in creative ways and blur the boundary between physical and digital mediums.
Intrigued? Let’s take a look at the future of web design—consider it Wix Studio design’s very own Les Prophéties.
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2025’s top web design trends
01. Nature distilled
In 2024, designers brought a touch of warmth and humanity to the digital landscape through handmade illustrations and handwriting fonts. In 2025, the trend will evolve into the “nature distilled” aesthetic, featuring palettes that celebrate the muted, earthy tones of skin, wood and soil, emphasizing a subtle sophistication that still brings warmth to our screens. Just look at the Pantone Color of the Year 2025: PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse.
Monolith’s site, which uses neutral tones to create a sleek yet grounded visual identity, evokes a sense of calm and authenticity. Other brands like Postcard and Sézane also employ warm neutral colors with handwritten or imperfect typewriter fonts.
Tap into the trend
Earthy palettes and organic typography: Use muted, natural tones like clay, soil and wood, paired with handwritten or typewriter-style fonts for a grounded yet warm aesthetic. Check out the Wix Studio x Pantone Color of the Year 2025 web capsule to access dozens of ready-to-use assets that celebrate PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse.
Subtle textures & minimalism: Incorporate textures inspired by paper, stone or wood grain and embrace clean, uncluttered layouts to evoke calm and authenticity.
Human connection through visuals: Use storytelling-focused imagery, natural lighting and imperfect elements to foster an emotional, relatable experience.
On-trend website templates
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02. Gamification
Gamification makes websites feel more like immersive experiences than static destinations. By embedding playful interactions, progress tracking, or engaging challenges, designers can keep users more engaged and create new ways to visually communicate information.
Khoren Matevosyan’s illustrations come to life in the gorgeous duotone browser-based game celebrating Armenian folklore and digital storytelling. Similarly, sites for Blendmode, Wild Memory Radio and Alec Tear’s unconventional scrolling effects and playful animations invite exploration of the screen beyond the typical user experience. Expect more brands to adopt this trend, as websites evolve into dynamic playgrounds that are as functional as they are fun.
Tap into the trend
Integrate playful interactions: Add elements like progress tracking, challenges or unconventional animations to make websites feel immersive and encourage exploration.
Enhance visual storytelling: Use interactive visuals, scrolling effects or animated illustrations to engage users emotionally.
Guide user behavior: Leverage gamified features to subtly direct users toward desired actions, improving engagement and retention while making the experience enjoyable.
Built on Wix Studio
03. Tactile maximalism
The boundaries between digital and physical design will continue to blur as websites adopt more tactile, three-dimensional elements. Beyond the bold experiments in 3D lettering we highlighted in maximalist design in 2024, this trend dives deeper into the realm of interactivity and dimensionality.
Take Wix Studio’s WebLab NY, where textured surfaces, floating animations and dynamic layering create a more immersive experience. Similarly, Inflatable Alphabet Vol. 2 plays with inflatables and sculptural typography, evoking the sense of objects you could reach out and squeeze. Wix Studio’s Design Wrap website template, meanwhile, turns 3D elements into whimsical rotating hero images that pop against a Brutalist style layout.
Expect to see more tactile visuals paired with animations that mimic the physical world—pressable buttons, reactive textures, and scrolls that feel alive under your fingertips. These sites don’t just look good; they feel good too.
Tap into the trend
Incorporate tactile 3D elements: Use sculptural typography, textured surfaces and dynamic layering to create a sense of depth and touchable realism.
Animate to mimic the physical world: Add subtle animations like pressable buttons, reactive textures, or scrolls that feel alive to enhance interactivity.
Blend playfulness with functionality: Combine whimsical 3D features (e.g., rotating hero images or inflatable visuals) with clean, structured layouts for a balanced user experience.
On-trend website templates
Check out more responsive templates on Wix Studio for your next maximalist design.
04. Exaggerated hierarchy
One of 2025’s other Maximalist subtrends will explore exaggerated hierarchy, where dramatically oversized typography is juxtaposed with tiny text for a striking visual contrast.
The key lies in the interplay: the oversized text commands the screen, serving as a visual anchor, while the smaller text invites closer inspection, drawing the user in for a more detailed engagement.
Take inspiration from Isabel Moranta’s portfolio, where oversized text dominates the layout, exuding confidence, while delicate, understated copy punctuates the design. We covered a similar trend with oversized footers here. It’s a visual language of extremes—simultaneously commanding and inviting—that reflects the growing demand for designs that are both visually arresting and strategically communicative.
Tap into the trend
Contrast as communication: Pair dramatically oversized typography to anchor the viewer's attention with tiny, understated text that invites detailed engagement.
Balance confidence and subtlety: Let bold, dominant type make a strong visual statement while delicate text punctuates the layout, offering nuance and depth.
Design for impact: Create a visual rhythm of extremes to craft layouts that are both striking and strategically engaging, ensuring the design is memorable and functional.
On-trend website templates
05. Retro revival
Legacy brands are refining, not reinventing, their historical designs. And the results are surprisingly modern. That’s because the key to pulling off this trend is balancing nostalgia with contemporary aesthetics.
Mountain Dew’s rebrand reclaimed its full name, reintroduced vintage mountain imagery, and incorporated "Est. 1948" to celebrate its heritage while appealing to modern tastes.
Also check out retro-inspired revamps for Burt’s Bee’s and Sizzler’s by Brooklyn-based Tavern. Updated logos, streamlined shapes and fresh palettes honor the brands’ history while feeling current.
On the flip side, Jaguar’s overhaul misfired by discarding its iconic leaping cat logo and adopting a generic sans-serif wordmark. The brand lost its luxurious and storied appeal, and let’s just say, people had feedback.
Retro web design translates into digital branding strategies that integrate nostalgic visuals, storytelling and modern typography. This trend lets brands celebrate their roots, connect emotionally with audiences, and stay relevant in a constantly shifting digital landscape—bridging the past and future seamlessly.
Tap into the trend
Refine, don’t reinvent: Modernize historical design elements like logos, typefaces or color palettes instead of starting from scratch. Highlight iconic features to retain familiarity while giving them a contemporary twist.
Emphasize storytelling: Incorporate your brand’s heritage into your digital presence through visuals and messaging. Use nostalgia-driven narratives to evoke trust and emotional connections with your audience.
Blend nostalgia with modernity: Pair vintage-inspired aesthetics with clean, modern design principles—simplified shapes, updated typography and fresh color schemes—to create a seamless balance between the past and present.
On-trend website templates
06. Museumcore
If you consider the retro revival trend an early stop in your web-design time machine, this one blasts you wayyyy back to opulent aesthetics of the 16th and 17th century. This maximalist web design subtrend borrows from the excess, ornamentation and teeny-tiny details of the Renaissance and Baroque artistic movements.
We’ve seen it on TV (Plains of Yonder’s White Lotus intro sequence evoked the murals of 16th century Italian villas), perfume, tinned fish and even dog shampoo. It was a welcome respite from the sans-serif sameness that’s dominated screen design for years.
This renaissance is possible, partly, because of improved tech, which can now support more visual details due to higher resolutions and bigger screen sizes. It begs designers to ask: what would the Mona Lisa look like if it were a website?. No pressure.
Tap into the trend
Old-style fonts: Choose fonts like Garamond or Caslon for their historical significance and vintage feel, or spring for a more decorative font pack with speciality glyphs and vector elements to create a unique monogram logo.
Rich jewel tones and subdued neutrals: Pops of colors like burgundy, navy blue and emerald green add sophistication when paired with cream, taupe and antique white backgrounds.
Patterns and illustrations: Look for vintage floral patterns, ornamental frames or Toile De Jouy to add decorative elements that evoke the luxuries of the past.
On-trend website templates
07. Dopamine colors
As the longest lasting trend in our list, we first highlighted dopamine colors in our 2022 trends report, and their staying power has been impressive. These vibrant, high-energy palettes—think neon pinks, electric blues and bold bright reds—are everywhere, infusing websites with optimism and unapologetic joy. Initially a response to a post-pandemic craving for positivity, dopamine colors have evolved into a mainstay of digital design. Sites like Modal and Wild Memory Radio showcase this trend masterfully.
These colors aren’t just a visual trend; they’ve become a tool for brands to communicate confidence and vitality, appealing to users on an emotional level. Expect to see more designers pushing the boundaries with hyper-saturated palettes in 2025, transforming every scroll into a serotonin boost.
Tap into the trend
Embrace vibrant palettes: Incorporate bold, high-energy colors like neon pinks, electric blues and bright reds to infuse your design with optimism and vitality.
Communicate emotionally: Use hyper-saturated hues strategically to evoke confidence and joy, creating an uplifting emotional connection with users.
Push boundaries: Experiment with unconventional color combinations and saturated gradients to make every interaction feel dynamic and exciting.
On-trend website templates
08. Slow design
In 2025, “slow design” will emerge as a counter-movement to the churn-and-burn practices of fast-paced digital production. Inspired by the ethos of the slow food movement, this approach emphasizes a thoughtful, deliberate web design process that prioritizes quality over speed.
Slow design invites web creators to pause, listen deeply to clients and craft solutions that resonate with clients' core values and audience needs. By taking the time to refine every detail—like typography and interactive elements—designers can produce websites that not only stand out in a crowded digital landscape but also contribute positively to the internet’s visual ecosystem.
For businesses, this approach fosters stronger connections with users and reinforces brand identity, making it a win-win for clients and creators alike. In a world inundated with quick fixes, slow design reminds us that quality takes time—and the results are worth the wait.
Tap into the trend
Deep listening & design collaboration: Take time to understand clients’ goals and audiences, crafting deliberate solutions that strengthen brand identity and user connection.
Refine for longevity: Create designs that stand out and contribute positively to the digital landscape by emphasizing timeless aesthetics and meaningful user experiences.
Prioritize quality over speed: Approach projects with care, focusing on thoughtful details like typography and interactive elements that align with brand values and resonate with audiences. (Use Wix Studio's visual sitemap and wireframe generator to save time on site structure and dedicate more time to design details and differentiation.)
09. Hyperreality
Hyperreality lives in the world between reality and simulation, making the simulated version feel more real or impactful than reality itself. This idea, introduced by Jean Baudrillard, often applies to media, art and culture, where simulations can seem more compelling than real experiences.
We see this now more than ever largely in part to the global rise of AI. Within the last two years Google Trends has shown a 1,700% jump in searches for AI design tools and a massive 8,500% increase in 'Generative AI' searches. (Check out Wix Studio’s AI tools to speed up your workflow and build responsive sites with a click.)
But AI is just part of what’s fueling the trend. Designers and creators are pushing limits of what’s possible in design both online and IRL. See: NPC characters on TikTok, MSCHF’s viral big red boots, Brompton House’s snackable brownies that you can take a bite out of with each click of your mouse, and Superorganism’s misty animation overlay that gives the feeling of being immersed in a tropical rainforest. MSCHF’s website is also full of surreal inspiration, especially the warped video banners and animated elements in their shop section.
Tap into the trend
Interactive 3D elements: Integrate interactive 3D elements that users can manipulate, like clickable objects that change state or appearance with each interaction, to create a more immersive experience.
Surreal animations: Use animations that alter the perception of the digital environment, like overlays or dynamically changing backgrounds, to give a sense of immersion and otherworldliness.
Unexpected design features: Implement playful design features, such as warped videos or animated elements, to surprise and engage users, making the online experience feel more dynamic and intriguing.
On-trend website templates
10. Elevated brutalism
Web Brutalism has been around for years, but 2024 saw an elevated version of this style emerge, blending the raw, minimalist principles of Brutalism with refined aesthetics. Beverage brands like Iessi and Sar Studio showed off high end photography with utilitarian typography and visible grid lines. And Family Type uses creative scrolling effects against a dark mode background.
Tap into the trend
Less is more: Stick to a limited color palette like black, white and one bold pop of color like red.
Get creative within constraints: Give system fonts like Times New Roman or Ariel more impact by increasing their point size.
Elevate Utilitarianism with high-impact photography: Transform functional and minimalist designs by integrating high-quality photography from sites like Stills to add emotional depth and visual appeal. (Creating a photography-rich site? Learn more about Wix Studio’s CMS.)
On-trend website templates
11. Digital sustainability
Digital sustainability is less about a specific aesthetic and more about a set of practices that ensures the digital work you create leaves less of an environmental impact. The internet and all the systems behind it make up about 3.7% of the world's emissions, which is on par with the aviation industry. Let that sink in.
If you want an eco-friendly website, one important part of sustainable web design is cutting down on energy use. Designers are making websites more efficient by simplifying code, reducing HTTP requests and optimizing images for quicker load times.
Many of these practices also improve the accessibility of a website, so you're not only producing websites that are better for the environment, they’re better for people, too.
C40 Cities recently revamped their website using ecodesign practices and successfully reduced CO2 emissions from 6.7g to 0.34g per homepage view, achieving a decrease of over 90% compared to before the relaunch. Plus, the site now boasts a 98% score on the Google Lighthouse accessibility rating and a swift page load time of 1.2 seconds. Adding a dark mode toggle also improves energy efficiency as well as accessibility. Re-scripted and Perpetuum are dark mode websites that incorporate it with creative flair. Royalties, the team behind the 2024 Paris Olympics logo design and custom typeface, created a variable weight font and implemented a dark mode option for mobile users.
Tap into the trend
Use energy-efficient fonts: Choose system fonts or variable fonts over custom web fonts to reduce the number of HTTP requests and improve loading times. This minimizes energy consumption.
Opt for dark mode: Implement a dark mode design or use darker colors with high contrast fonts instead of pure white for backgrounds, as darker pixels consume less energy on OLED screens and improve accessibility for viewers with disabilities.
Test your design: Whether you’re designing a new website or making changes to an existing one, run the url through Website Carbon to calculate your carbon footprint, verify if your site is using green hosting, and that your content loads efficiently and is accessible to all users.
On-trend website template
12. '80s excess
The resurgence of ’80s and early ’90s excess will continue to influence web design as part of the broader maximalism trend carrying over into 2025.
Brands like suncare startup Vacation members-only winery Rochambeau Club and the ultra-stylish Rocco wine cooler 1500 are embracing a visual identity steeped in this era’s opulent aesthetic.
Similarly, the revival of print magazines as collectible elevated products—like special editions from Nylon, Saveur and Field and Stream—has sparked a nostalgia-driven design movement that prioritizes quality and storytelling.
When translated into the world of web design, this trend often features grainy background textures, soft single-color gradients and heavy use of vintage photography and styling, creating a luxurious timeless appeal. Drawing on old-school magazine layouts, web design can incorporate thin-line motifs, bordered images and retro typefaces like neutral semi-serifs or thin serifs paired with elegant secondary scripts. Together, these elements channel the era’s unapologetic indulgence and elegance, reinterpreting it for a digital age.
Tap into the trend
Grainy background textures: Add grainy textures to backgrounds for a vintage feel.
Soft single-color gradients: Use gentle gradients, like pastel pink to light peach.
Magazine layout techniques: Frame images with thin lines and use bordered sections.
Retro fonts: Pair condensed serif fonts like ITC Garamond and Benton Modern with neutral sans serifs like Optima for a balance between over-the-top excess and readability.
Try it out and build an '80s-inspired scroll experience from this how-to video.
On-trend website templates
13. Dial-up design
There’s a nostalgia for the early web, when there were more niche online communities and fewer brand guidelines. Today, web designers are tapping into the spirit of experimentation from the Geocities era of the internet by utilizing low-fi social assets like memes and Y2K callbacks, like MS Paint and Word Art in their work.
Look to social collateral of major agencies like Droga5 and Wieden + Kennedy; the recently launched internet culture site Byline; the new Gen Z myspace-inspired app, NoSpace; and the female-run media startup for the “chronically online,” Boys Club as a few examples. And of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include Charli XCX’s viral album Brat as an example of peak Dial-up Design aesthetic, with its low-res sans-serif font against an aggressively slime green background. It’s all part of the Y2K craze and points to the continued dominance of this design approach moving into next year.
A solid meme also qualifies as an acceptable—if not preferred—design asset these days, especially for those clients targeting younger millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Look to social media accounts for popular communities like Seamoss Girlies (Gen Z’s anti-Goop?), the previously mentioned Boys Club, social-driven morning after pill Julie and messenger app Ghost for starters. Ryan Haskins' portfolio resurfaces the joy and chaos of collage and early graphic design tools. But all you’ve got to do is scroll Instagram to see this trend in the wild.
Brands also utilized low-fi assets in order to respond to the fast pace of ephemeral, of-the-moment internet trends, like #tomatogirl (Hunts’ impressive collab with cool girl boutique Lisa Says Gah), and lean into an audience that’s chronically online. One unexpected brand to get in on the trend is Celestial Seasonings, the classic ’90s tea company whose Sleepytime Bear mascot organically became a meme this year, which the brand is now capitalizing on by blanketing its own official account with the internet-famous icon.
Tap into the trend
Pixelated fonts: Use bitmap fonts like Press Start 2P or Neue Pixel Grotesk to emulate the low-resolution text style of early web design.
Bright and brash colors: Opt for a color palette that includes bright, neon colors and contrasting backgrounds, like black with neon green (#39ff14) or blue with pink (#ff69b4), to reflect the vibrant, sometimes clashing hues of ’90s websites.
Early internet UI: Incorporate retro-style buttons with bevels and shadows, using large, blocky buttons in bold, capital letters. Integrate animated GIFs and tiled background images for an authentic throwback look.
On-trend website templates
14. Retrofuture femme
This one’s for the Dollz. The internet is getting cuter, thanks to web designs inspired by Kawaii, an endearingly cute Japanese aesthetic. Consider this the kid sister of dial-up design. This web design trend is hyper femme and glittery (see trendy agency for it-girl brands Air Milkshake), and covered in hearts (Studio Nari for Coach), bows and butterflies. This overlaps with fashion trends like balletcore and coquettecore, and it’s gaining traction at the same time as girly, feminine fashions from designers like the sell-out-level popular Sandy Liang.
Girly, femme design emerged with force in 2023 as yet another counterpoint to traditional corporate web design tropes, another indication that consumers—especially younger ones—are tired of the same old sans. As creative consultancy Digital Fairy explains, the creative expression of the early internet, as found on sites like Myspace, Tumblr and Blingee, still resonates with designers today, and they’ll continue to repurpose the cute aesthetic continuing through 2024 for clients looking to cater to younger, fluently online audiences.
Tap into the trend
Y2K fonts: Use futuristic typefaces like Orbitron or Space Mono combined with retro-inspired, psychedelic fonts like Cyber Angel to create a nostalgic yet modern look.
Softer color palettes: Integrate a pastel color palette with shades like mint green, baby pink and soft lavender, accented with metallics like silver or rose gold for a futuristic touch.
Bling those buttons: Design buttons with a combination of neon glow or glitter effects and vintage-inspired shapes, such as rounded rectangles or pill shapes, to blend the old with the new.
On-trend website templates
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