Japandi
Also called: Japanese-Scandinavian, Wabi-Nordic, Japandi minimal
Japanese restraint meets Scandinavian warmth: oat paper, charcoal ink, muted sage, hairlines, enso circles and slatted wood — balanced off-centre, with lots of air.
Design keywords
Say these words to ask for this style.
Japandi blends wabi-sabi and Nordic function. The ground is warm oat, ink is soft charcoal, and colour is limited to muted sage and a little walnut. Everything is drawn with 1px hairlines and almost-square corners; there are almost no shadows: one long faint shadow under the hero shot. Compositions are deliberately asymmetric — headings sit off-centre, columns are uneven — and spacing is generous so each element can breathe. A brushed enso circle and thin wood-slat strips are the only ornaments, and type pairs a light mincho serif with a quiet geometric sans.
Best for
- Spas, onsen, tea houses and meditation apps
- Interior, furniture and architecture studios
- Boutique hotels and ryokan-style stays
- Premium lifestyle and slow-living brands
Avoid for
- Promotional e-commerce with many offers
- Kids and gaming products
- Data-dense operations dashboards
✓ Do
- Use 1px charcoal or #D3CBBE hairlines instead of shadows
- Offset headings and columns on one shared 1/12-column indent with uneven 7:4 splits rather than centring everything
- Keep colour to oat and charcoal plus one sage or walnut accent per component; the wood slats are material, not accent
✕ Don't
- Don’t round corners beyond 4px; no pill buttons, badges or chips; circles only for outlined icon rings, avatars, step numbers, radios and small status, legend and tab-bar dots; the switch is the only pill
- Don’t fill space just because it is empty
- Avoid pure white #FFF and saturated colour
Not to be confused with
On mobile
Keep generous side margins (24px+) and hairline lists without icon backgrounds; the enso appears once on onboarding and as a faint mark on the featured card. The tab bar is a plain oat strip with a hairline top and a small sage dot under the active item.
Prompt builder
Paste into Claude, Cursor, v0, Lovable or any coding agent to recreate this style.