Drew Ink The year

Neumorphism

Also called Soft UI, New skeuomorphism

A control that appears to be pushed up out of the background or pressed into it, made of one colour and two shadows, with no edge of its own.

Neumorphism: a player screen in one pale grey, a large album tile and three round transport buttons pushed up out of the ground, a scrubber and a volume pressed into it, a raised Repeat row holding a pressed track with a raised knob switched on, and a queue of two rows the screen cuts at the bottom edge. No edge is drawn anywhere.
Neumorphism, an app screen, Drew Ink. Drawn 2026-09-12.
Neumorphism: a card drawn with the style's own declarations on the ground the style needs.
Neumorphism, the recipe on a card, Drew Ink. Drawn 2026-09-09.
Neumorphism, a breakdown: the page with its own margins ruled in the mark colour, the album square boxed, the recipe as declared and as measured on the file beneath, and the page's colours swatched with their shares.
Neumorphism, the breakdown, Drew Ink. Drawn 2026-09-10.

Near it

GlassmorphismClaymorphismSkeuomorphismFlat design

What it looks like

Neumorphism
background: #e0e5ec;
border-radius: 20px;
box-shadow: 9px 9px 18px #b8bec7, -9px -9px 18px #ffffff;
color: #3d4451;

What it is made of

element backgroundidentical to the groundthis is the definition; the moment they differ it is something else
two shadowsequal and opposite offsets, one lighter than the ground and one darkerthe light one implies a single light source up and to the left
bordernonethere is nothing to draw an edge with
radiuslarge, 16px and up
what the person who named it says about it nowMalewicz: "Last year I unintentionally started the craze around Neumorphism, but as I predicted then, it didn't really take over the design scene. In that very first article, I also mentioned all the potential accessibility problems this style faces." His own thesis for where it works: "this style can work if used scarcely and if the objects on these backgrounds still hold their structure and readability without the decoration."Michal Malewicz, "Glassmorphism in user interfaces". PARTIAL: the pull captured the preamble and the paywall, not the article body, so only the author's opening remarks are readable and they are about NEUMORPHISM rather than glassmorphism. Quoted here rather than on the glassmorphism entry because that is what the readable part of the file is about. An originator saying his own style did not take over, and that he raised its accessibility problems in the first article, is worth more than any later summary

Where it came from

Named by Michal Malewicz in a December 2019 piece; the look was circulating on Dribbble before it had a name. It was widely discussed and almost never shipped, for the reason below.

Where it fails

Always, for anything that has to be operated. Because the control and the ground are the same colour, the boundary contrast is close to zero by construction, and a user interface component wants 3:1 against what surrounds it. Nothing about the technique can meet that without stopping being the technique. It is worth knowing as a word and worth admiring as a drawing; it is not a way to build a button somebody has to find.

Sources