Dark is not automatically black
Dark here is navy, indigo, burgundy-adjacent night water, and moody paint. A true black tile is not the hero of week one. Navy hides grease and keeps a bedroom from lighting up like a flash. Black shows every fingerprint and every status-bar ghost.
The navy brushstroke that fades to sky is the file we recommend first. The top is a clock zone. The bottom is dark enough to feel like night. The gold-dot navy is busier; treat it as a poster, not a field.
Bedrooms and offices
In a dark bedroom, navy is kinder than a white floral. In a bright office, navy can look like a hole in the desk. If you work under fluorescent light, test the dusk lake and the navy stroke at your actual desk brightness before you commit.
Gray-leaning dusk sits here when the file is more night than lilac. If it looks purple to you, the purple page is the other door to the same lake.
OLED
Dark fields are not free. Tiny bright specks on black can stamp. Samsung and RTINGS both treat static bright marks on OLED as a wear pattern.[1][2] We avoid starfields. Broad strokes and a sky wash are the pattern. Still rotate if you already have keyboard ghosts.
A dark home screen plus a brighter lock screen is the stack we use on our own phones. Icons on navy, a lake or a splash when the phone is locked.
Black, later
When we add a black solid it will have grain or a soft vignette. Until then, navy is the honest dark. The black-and-white page is high contrast, not a black field.
Night without a hole in the desk
Dark files have two failure modes: they flash a bedroom, or they look like a hole on a white desk. Navy-to-sky fails the second less than crushed black because the top of the panel still has air. That is why we push that file first.
Gold specks are a poster. I left them on a home screen for one commute and spent the morning hunting pale icons. They went back to the lock screen. The write-up said that. People skip write-ups.
When a true black with grain arrives, it will be listed here and on black-and-white if it is also a poster. Until then, navy is the honest recommendation, not a dodge.