Your site didn’t suddenly get better at sunset. Your eyes did.
I caught myself tonight staring at a dark-themed page I built today and thinking, wow, it looks cleaner, deeper, more polished than it did at noon. Colors that felt flat now pop. The background finally sits right. Not magic. Biology.
My AI research agent pulled the raw data on this, and the pattern is boringly human. Daylight floods your room, bounces off the screen, and washes out contrast. At night the room goes dark, your pupil opens up, and the screen becomes the brightest thing around. That alone makes edges look sharper and colors feel richer.
There’s also the Purkinje effect - in low light your vision shifts toward blue-green. Reds look duller, blue accents look punchy. If your palette leans cool, it will sing at dusk. If it leans warm, it will look sleepy. That’s not design quality. That’s your retina.
Dark mode is part of the illusion. It feels easier in dim rooms and it reduces glare. But for long reading, most people still read fast