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January 22, 2024In the ever-changing world of mobile applications, a visually pleasing interface is everything. Flutter, Google’s UI toolkit for making natively compiled apps that work on desktop, web, and mobile from one codebase, has become a top competitor in this realm. One of the key things that sets Flutter apart is its powerful theming and styling capabilities. This allows developers to design captivating user interfaces (UIs) with ease. This article will take a deep dive into the inner workings of cohesive themes in Flutter applications, guiding you in creating an aesthetically appealing app. It will also show you some advanced styling techniques that’ll help you make your app look beautiful. Also, check out our article on creating dark themes.
Creating Cohesive Themes
The base of any visually coherent app lies within its theme. A Flutter theme is a collection of colors, font styles, and sizes that can be applied globally across an application. Doing this ensures consistency throughout your entire product. The ThemeData
class is a customizable theme that can be defined at the root of your app to ensure global uniform usage.
To craft these themes you’ve got to start by choosing the right color palette for your brand. Your base color scheme should include a primary color, secondary color, and accent color if applicable. Utilizing the ColorScheme
class provided by Flutter allows developers to define their colors in an organized way.
Styling text with accurate fonts, sizes, or weights plays another important role in creating cohesive themes. The TextTheme
class offers many options, but it’s up to you, the developer, to decide what works best for each element within your app.
Once everything is set up, define specific widgets. You can do this within the MaterialApp
widget, which can wrap around the application, automatically applying the definition ThemeData
to all child widgets. This can save you lots of time later down the development road if changes need to be made. Moreover, developers can use theme overrides to customize the appearance of specific widgets without altering the global theme, offering flexibility in design while maintaining overall coherence.
Advanced Styling Techniques in Flutter
Flutter provides tons of features beyond basic theming. These extra steps can sometimes be all you need to elevate your design above others. One such technique is the use of custom fonts. Using custom fonts gives widgets uniqueness that basically nobody else has. This can be done by specifying them within the pubspec.yaml
file and then utilizing them within the ThemeData
or in any widgets that require those fonts.
You can also add gradients. Gradients give your app depth and make it look better overall. I’m sure you’ve seen a gradient but never knew how easy they were to create until now. Instead of solid-colored backgrounds, developers can use the Container
widget with a BoxDecoration
that specifies your desired gradient.
A good way to help give your UI some depth and emphasis is by using shadows. In Flutter, you can use the BoxShadow
property in decoration to add shadows to widgets which will make them appear elevated or inset. Using shadows properly can improve a user’s focus on certain elements and enhance the aesthetics of your app as a whole. Additionally, when it comes to Material Design widgets in Flutter like Card and FloatingActionButton
, they come with built-in elevation properties that are useful for applying shadows and creating layered UIs.