A white page, and cards that still read on it

The canvas was #F1F0EC — a warm grey that made every screen look slightly
dull. It is white.

── You cannot have both ──

That canvas was not an accident: it was deepened from #F7F6F4 on 2026-09-23
precisely so a white card would sit *on* something and its 1px edge could go
quiet. A white card on a white page has nothing to sit on.

Measured rather than judged by eye: after the canvas change, a pixel scan
across a card boundary on the Orders golden read #FFFFFF from end to end. The
shadow contributed nothing findable. The cards had not become subtle, they had
disappeared.

So the edge comes back. `DmCard` drew its border only for tones that are not
white — the warm canvas was doing that job for the white ones — and now draws
it for every tone, with the lift still underneath. Border plus a soft shadow is
the iOS and Revolut shape rather than the borderless Airbnb one, and that is
the price of a white page. Paid deliberately.

── What moved with it ──

`surfaceAlt` lifts to #F4F2EF. With a white page it is the only token that
makes a surface read as recessed — filled inputs, tiles, skeletons, the sunken
card — so it can no longer sit within a point of the canvas.

`DmCardTone.sunken` filled itself with the canvas colour, which on a white page
is not sunken but invisible. It takes `surfaceAlt`.
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-30 11:35:30 +05:30
parent c7a74c57b8
commit e2fe1b1771
32 changed files with 47 additions and 19 deletions

View File

@@ -65,7 +65,9 @@ class DmCard extends StatelessWidget {
DmCardTone.plain => DmColors.surface,
DmCardTone.fill => DmColors.brand,
DmCardTone.wash => DmColors.brandSoft,
DmCardTone.sunken => DmColors.canvas,
// Not the canvas any more: the page is white, and a card filled with
// the page colour is not sunken, it is invisible.
DmCardTone.sunken => DmColors.surfaceAlt,
};
Color get _edge => switch (tone) {
@@ -106,15 +108,25 @@ class DmCard extends StatelessWidget {
boxShadow: _lifts ? (raised ? DmShadow.cardRaised : DmShadow.card) : null,
),
child: Container(
// A tone that is not white keeps its edge: a crimson or washed card is
// already separated from the canvas by its own colour, and a shadow
// under a saturated fill reads as grime rather than as lift.
foregroundDecoration: _lifts
? null
: BoxDecoration(
borderRadius: radius,
border: Border.all(color: _edge),
),
// ── Every card keeps its edge now ──
//
// A white card used to have none: the warm canvas underneath was doing
// the separating, and a border on top of that contrast read as an
// outlined box rather than a lifted surface.
//
// The page is white. A white card on it is invisible — measured, not
// guessed: a scan across a card boundary on the Orders golden was
// #FFFFFF from end to end, with the shadow contributing nothing the
// eye could find. One of the two has to do the separating, and with
// the page white it has to be the edge.
//
// The lift stays underneath it. Border plus a soft shadow is the iOS
// and Revolut shape; it is not the borderless Airbnb one, and that is
// the cost of a white page.
foregroundDecoration: BoxDecoration(
borderRadius: radius,
border: Border.all(color: _edge),
),
child: ClipRRect(
borderRadius: radius,
child: Column(