The Top Web Design Trends of 2025: What’s Next for UX & UI

Bold & Experimental Color Palettes

Users judge your website within seconds (some refer to the “3-second rule” in design thinking, in which you need to make a strong first impression on your users within 3 seconds). One such element that affects users’ subconscious judgment is color.

Bold and unapologetically fun color palettes are taking over in 2025 and are likely to continue in the coming years. Think of dopamine-induced colors, like neon green or pink. They tend to bring joy along with a “noisy” and “edgy” feeling, which often resonates with Gen Z trendsetters.

However, a bold color palette doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be loud. There are many ways a web design can be vibrant, fun, and dynamic. With the right balance of color harmony principles, creative web approaches, and the right implementation of complementary colors, one can easily join this trend while leaving a strong impression on its users.

Examples of bold and fun color palettes you can consider are:

• Vibrant but calm: Consider combining vibrant colors like red, but perhaps a muted version of it, with the combination of neutral colors like beige or grey to balance it out. This gives the design a vibrant yet calm feeling.

• Cool color palette: Bold color palettes don’t always have to be exclusively warm and bright. Cool and deep colors, like teal, combined with bright metallics, can still be just as visually appealing.

Typography as a Design Hero

Color schemes aren’t the only way to express your brand identity. While colors give website visitors a general feel, typography is the unsung heroes that convey a brand’s key message. It helps set the mood, plays a role in determining readability and legibility, and delivers key information to users. All in all, a well-thought-out typography supports site visitors with a smooth navigation and exploration experience and keeps them on the page longer.

One big design trend is letting the typeface be the star, whether it is on the landing page, a selected few service pages, or perhaps all of them. Large and expressive typefaces not only capture users’ attention immediately, but they also deliver the core brand message clearly. Oversized and layered text is one great and simple way to achieve this without overcomplicating the website’s design.

For example, this website utilizes a variety of sans-serif typefaces to keep the design energetic and attention-grabbing, yet it doesn’t lose its elegance. The large bold fonts keep the messages clear and simple.

Minimalism 2.0 (Whitespace + Functionality)

Modern web designs have defied the traditional notion of what a website is “supposed” to look like. This style of design only highlights the essential elements, makes use of white spaces, uses a simple color palette, and has a clear hierarchy. This style creates a responsive web design that results in lightning-fast website performance and easy mobile optimization and maintenance.

There are sub-styles of minimalism, like ultra-minimalism (where the website only displays the bare necessities) and bold minimalism (where the site still has a clean layout, but with bold and striking typography).

Dark Mode/Dark Colored Themes

Dark mode isn’t a new concept. It is known for reducing eye strain in low-light environments, reducing screen glare, and allowing our eyes to adjust better.

That’s the practical side of dark mode. On an aesthetic note, dark and deep colors create a luxurious, modern, and sleek feel. The contrast in color can also make certain colors stand out and create a clear hierarchy.

Dark colors are making a comeback, as it seems like these colors never get old. Let’s take a look at the following example of a landing page, where the simple use of a dark background and contrasting, bold typography conveys a clear message, but still gives users a modern feeling.

Motion & Micro-Interactions

The phrase “micro interactions,” which was first used by Dan Saffer, describes subtle yet powerful design components that offer tactile feedback when navigating a page. They are triggered when a user hovers over them or clicks on them, leading to an animation or other obvious audio or visual cue. The most well-known micro interaction is when you hover over a link and it changes colors. Other examples of this include dynamically loading animations, social reaction buttons (like those used in Facebook), file upload progress, and so on.

This trend is likely to continue, as it not only offers immediate positive feedback for visitors but also encourages user engagement. They can also act as a guide so users can navigate through the page with fun animations (“Click here!” or “Swipe right to continue!”). Another instance of microinteractions and microanimations is their use on e-commerce sites. Progress steppers are a growing web design trend, guiding users through checkout in clear, manageable steps. With added microinteractions, they deliver instant feedback that keeps the experience smooth and engaging.

Immersive 3D & Hyperreal Experiences

The advancements in technology have allowed web designers to incorporate realistic 3D elements in websites. Some 3D designs even allow users to interact with them, creating an immersive and hyper-realistic experience. The rise of AR and VR technology has also contributed to the rise of 3D designs.

3D images create a sleek and modern feeling. Your site also tends to stand out with this design, conveying the brand’s story more effectively, especially if you include interactive elements. The 3D models, additionally, can also bring a playful and fun element to the website, like our example below.

Y2K and Retro-Inspired Designs

Trends are cyclical. Retro and Y2K trends are making a comeback, with a modern twist. This creates a design that still evokes nostalgia, but still keeps things fresh and exciting with a modern touch.

The meaning of retro actually evolves with time. In general, however, the retro style often involves bold color palettes (groovy hues and neon colors), retro typography that reminds viewers of old signage or classic movies, vibrant gradient colors, checkered patterns, pixel art, VHS effects, and the list goes on. But with a touch of modern web technology, retro styles can deliver a unique visual experience. You can consider this trend the opposite of the polished and sleek design trends we mentioned earlier.

Geometric Designs

Shapes have always played an integral part in telling stories through web designs. They can deliver a sense of hierarchy, guide viewers’ eyes, and add a fun and whimsical element to an otherwise flat web design. The most common and easy way is to use shapes to frame call to action (CTAs), headlines, or taglines.

The trend in 2025 and beyond doesn’t simply stick to the traditional shapes of squares, rectangles, or circles. The use of abstract or organic shapes is becoming more and more common, as this gives teams more creative freedom and freshness.

Depending on how you use the shapes, they can be incorporated well with retro, minimalism or other aforementioned design trends.

Short & Smart Videos

A survey by Demand Sage showed that nearly two-thirds of consumers (66%) find short-form video the most engaging format, and more than 80% (82%) say it has directly influenced a purchase decision. Due to the short burst of dopamine, fitting into a short window of downtime and digestible information, short videos have become more and more popular.

Gone are the days of embedding an entire YouTube video onto your website. Being short isn’t enough; the video also needs to have a clear purpose while effectively incorporating brand identity. In other words, short and smart videos are how you win over customers.

Gamified Designs

There are plenty of ways to enhance user engagement and keep them a little bit longer on your site, and one such extremely effective way is gamification. After all, not every interaction on the website needs to be straightforward or formal.

Turning an activity or task into a game or something similar to a game is known as “gamification.” Common examples of gamified content in web design include quizzes, assessments, calculators (e.g., calculating the price of a certain service), and so on. As gamified design creates a fun and positive experience that is associated with the brand, customers are likely to stay longer, provide more personal information, and increase loyalty. This is why we believe this trend will prevail, and even more creative gamified designs are going to emerge.

Gamifying your design doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, LinkedIn employs a profile completion mechanic, similar to an achievement system with a status bar, to motivate users to fully build their profiles. This strategy appeals to a user’s “completionist” instinct and leverages the perception that detailed profiles indicate better networking abilities, thereby encouraging task completion through feedback.

Brutalism

Brutalism in web design is a style defined by raw, asymmetrical layouts, minimal styling, and a deliberate rejection of conventional polish. Originally emerging as a reaction to the uniformity of modern web design, it favors stark visuals, default fonts, clashing textures, and a lack of clear hierarchy.

In 2025, brutalism is growing into several forms: bare-bones brutalism, which leans on stripped-down simplicity, and elevated brutalism, where designers introduce bold colors, modern typography, or interactive elements to create a more refined edge. While not suited for every brand, brutalism captures attention, makes a statement, and thrives in creative portfolios or experimental projects.

AI-Powered in Web Design

Artificial Intelligence has taken the world by storm over the past few years. It has already reshaped numerous industries despite still being in its infancy. There are, of course, numerous discussions regarding AI ethics, such as its copyright infringement issues and whether AI can replace human designers in the future.

This article won’t dig into these issues, but we do believe AI will continue to play important roles in the web design world, whether it involves automation or enhancing user experience. More than a trend, this is a shift that businesses need to adapt and make use of.

There are several ways AI can be utilized in the web design world:

• AI is a great tool for data collection. Design teams can use this information to identify user preferences and generate personalized experiences.
• AI and machine learning (ML) can auto-generate web layouts that are visually interesting, functional, and optimized for search engines.
• Using AI algorithms, users can identify and search for targeted objects quickly. This feature is especially useful in e-commerce websites.

Above are only some noticeable examples of what AI can do in web design. It’s crucial that businesses start embracing this technology to further enhance their web design and user experience.

A Website Proves Your Credibility

Let’s say a new customer heard of you from a friend, and they decide to research you online. However, what they come across is a website that looks like it last been updated and patched in 2015. The information is vague and overall, the website doesn’t seem credible.

A website is a digital handshake. Why would you risk such an important first interaction with new customers? A solid foundation with strong employees won’t reverse the negative first interactions of a badly designed website.

A Responsive Website Retains Customers

Visitors expect your website to work well on every device, not just on desktops. With so many other choices, an awkward navigation on a tab, for example, is most likely chasing your potential customer away. Double-check to make sure that no matter the device customers are on, they have a seamless user experience.

A Clear Layout Conveys Information Well

It has been proven that our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. While long-form content definitely has its role on a website and a marketing strategy, make sure you display crucial information clearly and strategically. Don’t make users search for that important piece of information; make it easy to find. Users will stop engaging if information is too long, too cluttered, or poorly laid out.