Measured across 358 award-level websites · updated 2026-07-06
Most design "trends" are opinion. This report is measurement. We captured 358 of the best-designed sites on the web and extracted their real values — background colors, typography, hero media, accent hues, corner radius and layout rhythm — straight from the live pages. Here is what excellent web design actually looks like right now, in numbers.
Every figure below is computed from the Norrly library. Where a measurement wasn't reliably detectable on a site, it's excluded and the sample size (n) is stated, so nothing is inflated.
Despite the dominance of dark developer tools online, 82% of top sites ship a light theme by default (n=358). Dark design is a deliberate genre choice — mostly dev tools, crypto and studios — not the default of great design.
The median H1 measures 60px (n=286, range 11–257px). More surprising: the biggest group of headlines is set at light or regular weight, not bold — confidence comes from scale, not thickness. And 85% use negative letter-spacing (n=173), the single most reliable tell of a considered type system.
For body text the field converges hard on a few neutral workhorses. For headlines it fragments into licensed and custom foundry faces — proof that top teams spend their type budget on display, not body. Most-used body typefaces:
Across 358 sites, the hero splits four ways. A large static image remains the most common opening move, but background video and full WebGL scenes together account for a striking share — motion is now mainstream at the top end.
Great palettes are disciplined: a neutral base and a single working accent. When we isolate that accent across 193 sites, the hue distribution is clear — blue and warm orange/red lead, cool minimalism versus appetite-driven warmth.
The library's category mix is itself a signal of where ambitious design energy goes right now:
Each site in the Norrly library is captured from its live homepage and broken down into measured values — colors, fonts, type scale, radius, layout — using the same pipeline that powers every design breakdown and vibe-coding prompt. This report aggregates those measurements. It updates as the library grows.
Want the underlying values for a specific site? Every breakdown lists its exact palette, fonts and tokens, plus a paste-ready prompt for Lovable, Cursor and v0.
Explore all 358 design breakdowns →