Switching themes.

LADLE ships with two themes plus a system-follow option:

**Midnight** — warm near-black canvas with an umber undertone. The signature LADLE look. Best for focus and evening work.

**Daylight** — warm cream canvas with a Claude-coral accent. Better for long-form reading and daytime work near a bright window.

**System** — follows your operating system's light/dark preference. Switches automatically when your OS switches (e.g., macOS scheduled dark mode).

To change the theme, go to Settings → Appearance and pick one. The change applies immediately, no reload needed. Your preference is saved to your account, so it persists across devices when you sign in.

**One thing that never changes:** the marketing site (ladle.chat and all its pages) always stays in Midnight, regardless of your app theme. That's a deliberate brand consistency choice — the marketing surface is a poster on the wall, not a workspace, and its palette stays fixed. Only the app (chat, design, artifacts, settings, etc.) honors your theme choice.

**Onboarding default:** new users default to Daylight after we noticed longer read/write sessions on cream than dark. If you'd rather Midnight, one click in Settings and it sticks.

**Shared surfaces:** shared chat pages (/share/[slug]) default to Daylight regardless of the sharer's preference — long-form reading of chat transcripts reads better on cream. Published designs (/d/[slug]) render whatever background the design itself specifies; the LADLE chrome is minimal.