Vaporwave
Also called: A E S T H E T I C, Vapor UI, Mallsoft
A dreamy pastel sunset, Windows-95 windows with candy title bars, marble statues on a grid floor and wide-spaced capitals.
Design keywords
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Vaporwave is ironic nostalgia for early consumer computing and mall culture. A lavender-to-peach sky melts into a pink grid floor with a pastel striped sun; marble busts and palms float in the scene. Every panel is a Windows-95 window — square corners, two-tone bevels and a pink → violet → cyan title bar with tiny window buttons. Headlines are wide, spaced-out capitals with doubled pink/cyan offset shadows, and labels look like a VHS on-screen display. It is hazy, slow and tongue-in-cheek.
Best for
- Music labels, playlists and radio
- Art, zine and creator portfolios
- Streetwear and merch drops
- Indie games and internet-culture events
Avoid for
- Banking, health and government services
- Conversion-critical checkout flows
- Accessibility-first products for older users
- Corporate B2B
✓ Do
- Wrap content in Win95 windows: 0 radius, 2-tone bevel, gradient title bar #FF71CE → #B967FF → #01CDFE
- Keep the sky pastel so plum text (#241238) stays ≥ 7:1
- Use wide letter-spacing (0.12–0.3em) on Latin caps only
- One bust per view; other art uses columns, palms or the sun
- Hover = slight face brighten (brightness 1.06) and dotted underline, no lift
✕ Don't
- Don’t use a dark night sky with neon glow — that is Retro-Futurism
- Don’t round corners or use soft blur shadows
- Don’t letter-space Thai text
- Don’t put the sun, statues or grid lines behind headings or paragraphs
- Don’t stack offset shadows; one hard offset per element
Not to be confused with
On mobile
Treat the phone as one big desktop: cards become small beveled windows with title bars, the tab bar is a gray Win95 taskbar with sunken active buttons, and the featured card is a sunset window with a statue. Keep the sky gradient static; no blur.
Prompt builder
Paste into Claude, Cursor, v0, Lovable or any coding agent to recreate this style.