How to make a spreadsheet look good in dark mode
Grid by Zaweba has light and dark themes: the ribbon, panels and dialogs go dark while the cells stay white, so your colours and printouts look as intended.
Switch Grid to its dark theme. Grid by Zaweba has light and dark themes, changed with the Light / Dark button, and in the dark theme the ribbon, panels and dialogs turn dark while the cells themselves stay white. That keeps the surrounding window calm at night without changing how your sheet's colours, fills and charts look.
Why the cells stay white
It's a deliberate choice. A spreadsheet's cell colours carry meaning: a red fill for overdue, a green data bar, a pale yellow for input cells. If the grid inverted to dark, those colours would sit on a different background and look wrong, and the version you print or send would look nothing like what you saw on screen. Keeping the cells white means what you see is what everyone else sees.
Making the sheet itself easy on the eyes
Since the cells stay white, the way to make a sheet comfortable in a dim room is in how you design it. Soft fills are kinder than bright ones. A pale grey or a light tint of blue for headings and input cells is easier on the eye than a saturated colour, and dark text reads best on it.
Banded rows help in long lists. Format as Table offers a gallery of 60 table styles, many with gentle banding, so your eye can follow a row across without strain.
Zoom is underrated. The zoom slider in the status bar enlarges the grid without changing anything in the file, which makes a dense sheet much more comfortable to work in for a long stretch.
Colours that work for everyone
Conditional formatting is where colour choices matter most. Colour scales, data bars and icon sets show patterns quickly, but a red and green scale is hard for many people to read. A scale from light to dark in one colour works for everybody, and icon sets add shape as well as colour.
Keep text colours sober. Number formats can colour negatives red, which is a helpful convention; beyond that, plain dark text on a light fill is the most readable choice.
The rest of the window
With the dark theme on, the ribbon, the formula bar area, the Ask AI panel and dialogs such as Format Cells and Page Setup all follow it. That's most of the screen outside the grid, so the glare drops noticeably when you work in the evening, while the grid stays readable.
If you prefer, switch back to light during the day. The setting changes only how Grid looks, not anything in your workbooks, so a file looks exactly the same to someone opening it in the light theme or in another program.
When you share or print
Because the cell colours never change with the theme, a printout, a PDF export or an .xlsx you send matches what you designed. That's the real advantage of leaving the cells alone: there's no need to check a second version of the sheet before it goes out.
Print Preview shows the page as it will print, and Export as PDF uses the same layout, with real text in the cells' fonts.
A few final touches
Turn off gridlines for printing if your sheet uses borders, so the page looks clean. Use cell styles from the Home tab for headings and totals, so the look is consistent across sheets. And freeze the header row, so the headings stay in view without needing a loud colour to find them.
A good-looking spreadsheet is mostly a calm one. Grid by Zaweba's dark theme takes care of the window, and a few gentle design choices take care of the sheet.
