Chat UI design examples

A chat thread is where team conversations happen, so it must stay readable as messages pile up. Our examples show a conversation with emoji reactions, a reply thread, a file attachment, a typing indicator and a message composer, designed for web and mobile in eight visual styles with light and dark versions. Every example is an original design that comes with its HTML code and a DESIGN.md of colour, type and spacing tokens, in light and dark. Free to use and adapt.

DeviceAll Web Mobile

StyleAll Minimal Editorial Brutalist Luxury Playful Corporate Retro Monochrome

Theme

16 examples

Web · minimal

Web · editorial

Web · brutalist

Web · luxury

Web · playful

Web · corporate

Web · retro

Web · monochrome

Mobile · minimal

Mobile · editorial

Mobile · brutalist

Mobile · luxury

Mobile · playful

Mobile · corporate

Mobile · retro

Mobile · monochrome

See it in a flow

Message a teammate and start a call

Chat thread design tips

Group consecutive messages from the same sender under one name and avatar to reduce visual noise.
Insert date separators and a clear new-messages divider so people can find where they left off.
Keep the composer fixed at the bottom and grow it with multi-line text up to a sensible maximum height.
Show file attachments as cards with name, type and size, so people know what they are opening before they click.

Questions

Should chat messages use bubbles or a flat list?

Bubbles suit one-to-one personal messaging, where alignment shows who said what. Flat, left-aligned lists with names suit team chat, where many people take part and messages can be long or contain code and files. Choose based on group size and content.

How should threaded replies appear in a chat conversation?

Show a compact reply summary under the original message, with participant avatars and a reply count, and open the full thread in a side panel or separate view. This keeps the main conversation readable while side discussions continue.

Where should timestamps go in a chat thread?

Show a time next to the first message of each group, and reveal exact times on hover or long press for the rest. Use date separators between days. This gives enough context without repeating a timestamp on every line.

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Website sections

Website templates

Building with an AI coding agent? Every screen here is also in the free Made Good Designs MCP server: ask Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT to search_ui_screens (e.g. “billing settings, editorial style”), get_ui_flow for a whole journey, and get_ui_screen_code to pull the HTML and DESIGN.md straight into your project.