The Light theme is the custom WordPress theme behind every site I build. Here’s why I made it, and the care that goes into the parts of a website you never see.
Most of what makes a website good, you never see. You feel it instead. The page arrives quickly, moves smoothly and reads clearly on your phone. Underneath sits a long list of decisions. This studio note is a glimpse behind the scenes, at the development and strategy that make it work.
Light is built for WordPress, the platform behind over 40% of the world’s websites. Updating your own pages is as simple as editing a document. A huge global community keeps it improving. And because it’s so widely used, your site is never tied to one person. It’s yours.
Design for clarity. Build for speed.
The name Light works on two levels.
- In design, light means direction, clarity and mood. You can see it at the top of this site, in the rays that drift and respond to your cursor.
- In development, light means lean, fast and carrying nothing extra.
One word covers both the design and development in how I work.
90+ Google PageSpeed Insights
A fast page keeps people reading instead of leaving. It feels dependable, and that becomes part of how people see your business. Amongst many parameters, Google uses PageSpeed Insights to decide how to rank pages, so a faster site helps you get found. It scores each page out of 100 for performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO.
The Light theme gets to a 90+ score by carrying nothing it doesn’t need. Each part of a page brings its own styling and code, and only when that part is actually on the page.
Accessible animation everyone can enjoy
Design in motion is the part I love most. Pages glide into one another and words and images arrive as you scroll. Done well, motion is what makes a site memorable.
It also has to earn its place. When I first built the light effect at the top of this site, the mobile speed score fell from 93 to between 62 and 73. I didn’t want to lose the effect or settle for a slower page. So I moved its drawing work into the background, where it no longer holds the page up. The page stays beautiful and fast.
Some people find movement on screen uncomfortable. Phones and computers have a setting for that, and the Light theme respects it. Every page also has its own switch, in the bottom-left corner when you arrive, that turns motion off or back on for this site alone. Each animation is designed to answer one question. What happens when motion is off? The whole theme is built with the WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility guidelines in mind.
Cut carbon. Save energy.
Every time a page loads, it uses energy in the data centre that stores it, the networks that carry it and the device that shows it. That’s a website’s carbon footprint. A lighter page needs less of all three.
Website Carbon is a free tool that estimates how much carbon a web page produces each time someone visits it. This site’s homepage comes in at 0.03g of CO₂ per visit, cleaner than 95% of the pages it has tested. See the full Website Carbon report.
There’s a dark mode too. On the OLED screens many phones now use, dark pixels draw less power, so it’s kinder to your battery as well as your eyes.
You might be thinking, surely the energy saving is a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things. And it is, for now. What a lighter page does is save a little on every visit, for as long as the site is live. The leaner, greener approach brings far more than lower CO₂. A faster website, a smoother experience, better responsiveness, and the list goes on. Alongside it come lower-carbon choices wherever I can make them, and 1% of turnover to environmental causes and local animal charities. None of it is the whole answer. It’s a start, and I’m building on it.
Directed by experience
AI has picked up a reputation. Vibe coding and AI slop have made it easy to ship something that looks finished at first glance. The truth is simple. AI is only as good as the person directing it.
Here, the direction is mine, shaped by 14 years in web design and development. The design, the feel of every animation, the standards the work is held to, and the final call on all of it. AI does the building, inside a system I’ve designed for exactly that.
That system has three parts.
- A design system where every space, size and colour is defined once.
- A shared library of parts where one improvement lifts every page.
- A handbook of standards that checks every change for accessibility, speed and motion.
Each lesson goes back into the handbook, so every site starts smarter than the last. The time AI saves goes back into design and detail, and into getting your site live sooner.
Build for the future
Technology moves fast. Software products change or disappear. A site tied to one tool ages with it. The true value of the Light theme isn’t the WordPress code. It’s the strategy, the design system, the standards and the handbook sit separate from the platform. They travel well. If a project requires a modern framework like Astro, the strategy pivots to match. Fast turnaround times. Reliable results.
What this means for you
You receive a site that loads quickly, feels good to use and works for everyone. The care is in the parts you don’t see. I work with businesses across Surrey, London and beyond. Brands, websites and digital systems. Properly done.
Man
