How To Choose The Right Website Color Schemes
What are website color schemes?
As you begin the creative process of building a site, along with the web design color schemes that you need to place in your designer’s hands, you’ll have to consider your color palette with care. Different colors will send different messages to page visitors and will create a lasting impression on how they perceive your brand.
To elicit emotion with color is psychological science that has proven itself to be the heart of any business-oriented design process. So where do you begin when choosing a color palette, and what can you do to ensure you get your website color schemes right the first time?
- Take On A Branding Approach
When choosing from a color palette, it’s not just about actual color palettes at hand, and what you may favor. There is a deeper science behind choosing the right website color schemes. Your brand identity must be considered and reflect itself in what you have selected.Think of the logo you use. Consistency is key and as a general rule, brands will not use a different logo on their website and another on their products.
The same rule applies to color themes and this has to be considered carefully once you navigate across different marketing and social media platforms. Choose your website color schemes with care so that it may represent your brand’s vision and objectives.
Determine Your Dominant Color
Having a dominant color in mind is a good place to start. For instance, if you have a logo in place, there might already be a primary color palette in every design. Use this color to make decisions in the next steps of figuring out your website color schemes.
Think of brands that you like or a well-known brand such as Coca Cola. The brand’s primary color, in this case, is red. Your primary color will be what site visitors associate with your brand.
Looking for inspiration across the web is helpful, but how do you grab web colors you may like? Brandcolors.com is a good place to find the hex codes of colors that some of the world’s most notable brands make use of.
Add the color you wish to use to your favorites list and use a Google Chrome browser add-on such a ColorZilla to save the hex code for later use.
Choose Accent Colors (No More Than 3!)
Now that you have a dominant color, you will need to determine how many other colors you may want to make use of in your overall website color scheme. Ideally, you may want to stick to a three-color selection from different angles across the color wheel that will assist you in choosing the best website color schemes for your brand.
Designers usually make use of the 60-30-10 design rule that suggests non-equal use of colors selected, but rather to consider dividing them into percentages of use.
A triadic palette can be quite eye-catching if the colors are vibrant, so a collection of secondary colors are usually selected.
Consider Culture
We all have specific ideas about what color means to us and how we feel about them. But from a cultural point of view, certain colors may have a different meaning to groups from different backgrounds. Before you make final selections for your website color schemes, consider what colors may mean in different cultural contexts.
For a long time, the color white has been something people in English-speaking countries see as a symbol of purity and cleanliness. In Asia, however, white is a color commonly associated with mourning.
It’s important to put your feelers out there and do thorough research to ensure that your target audience will not associate anything with negative connotations to your brand.
However, in the end, should you decide on a color, do know that not everyone cares about color interpretations, but do consider the fact that all colors have different meanings all across the world.
Where To Place Colors
Primary Colors will have to be placed on the ‘hot spots’ of your website. Bold, catchy colors can attract the attention of visitors and compel them to take action. Headlines, useful icons, download forms, CTA buttons, and important information needs to be highlighted with the primary colors you choose for your website color schemes.
Secondary Colors should be used in places where information of less importance is placed across the website. All subheadings, secondary buttons, active menu items, backgrounds, or supportive copy such as FAQs and client testimonials are to be highlighted with these colors.
Neutral Colors usually find their place in text or background, but can be used to tone down sections that contain vibrant color schemes on your site.
Examples Of Elicited Emotion In Color
Red - Whenever we think of this color, we are reminded of passion, importance, and in some cases, aggression. It demands the viewer’s attention, but it can also be overpowering, so use sparingly.
Yellow - This is a color that usually evokes feelings of happiness and joy. It's the color of the sun, a feeling related to summer fun, but surprisingly, it also brings about feelings of anxiety in some. Using yellow should be done with caution and of course, in varying shades.
Blue - While most would say this a royal color, it is also a wonderfully versatile and dependable color that evokes a feeling of safety and trust. It also has a calming effect on the brain and it helps to create a friendly, inviting feeling which can be seen with many businesses and companies operating in the medical and travel industries.
Orange - When used right, this color will spark impulsivity, playfulness, and energy. But, in so many cases it represents lower prices. But if you wish to showcase your brand’s youthfulness or the eye of an impulse buyer, this might be the way to go.
Choosing the right website color scheme from a palette may seem like the easiest thing you will do, but as a business, you cannot pick colors that work in your favor without careful consideration and thought.
Conclusion
There is a complex science behind color selections that requires you to put the feelings of your audience first. What your business needs are colors that spark a specific feeling within your target audience.
Your business needs a color selection that makes your brand memorable and evokes all the right emotions in a massive pool of competitors that aim for the same thing. Have fun with your creative process of choosing your website color schemes and always remember that every color tells a different story.
