When it comes to your website, you need to provide a fantastic experience for your customers to get them hooked on your brand. Suppose you have just launched the perfect website for your business. The layout, performance, navigation and content are impeccable. All of this makes for a dream experience for your users, and they love it.
You’ll only achieve this if you choose the right color scheme for your website, which we’ll show you, even if you don’t have any design experience.
Color has a big impact on the way we see the world. Therefore, it can have a big impact on how we perceive a website. However, when it comes to website design, the color scheme often takes a back seat.
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Why are website colors important?
The color of your website is important because colors can induce specific emotions when seen. You might think colors don’t have any effect on you, but you’d be surprised at how much color choice can impact a business’s bottom line. In fact, according to Kissmetrics research, 85% of people say color has a significant influence on what they buy. When some businesses changed the colors of their CTA buttons, they noticed a significant increase or decrease in conversions.
Also Read: 11 Important Reasons To Embrace Website Accessibility
6 tips for choosing the best colors for your website
We’re going to share six essential tips for creating an amazing website color palette. Whether you have a working knowledge of color theory or are unsure of the difference between primary and secondary colors, these tips will help you choose the best color combination for your website. Let’s start, will you?
Learn the fundamentals of color psychology
Color psychology plays an important role in marketing. It would take too long to go into details. So here are the most important fundamentals you need to know.
Color associations are extremely powerful. We develop them from childhood, and they usually stay with us for the rest of our lives. These associations are intuitive and, in many cases, subconscious.
Many of these links are quite widespread. Green, for example, is associated with leaves and nature, while yellow is associated with the sun.
Some, however, are cultural. According to a study, Americans associate envy with the colors black, green, and red, while Russians associate envy with black, purple, and yellow colors.
Since many brands have a global presence, cultural associations are more important than ever. Some countries may associate something negative with your brand based on the colors you use, which you don’t want.
Learn the basics of color theory
Color theory, in a nutshell, is the science of how colors work. The long version is more difficult to explain; entire university courses are devoted to it! However, you can learn a few simple concepts to improve your understanding of colors for your website design.
To get started, you need to understand primary, secondary and tertiary colors. Primary colors are those that cannot be created by combining two other colors. The primary colors are red, yellow and blue. By mixing two secondary colors, a third color is obtained. For example, if you combine blue and yellow (two primary colors), you get green (a secondary color).
Tertiary colors are created by combining an adjacent primary color and secondary color on the color wheel. They give compound colors; for example, the combination of blue (primary) and purple (secondary) results in blue-violet (tertiary).
Next, let’s talk about warm and cool colors. You probably know what hot and cold colors are. Warm colors are reds, oranges, and yellows, while cool colors are blues, greens, and purples. Third, it is essential to understand the nuances of color.
Not all the colors you see are pure. Most of the colors you see on the internet have been influenced in one way or another. You can see a tint (a color that has been added white), a shadow (a color that has been added black) or a tone (a color that has been added gray).
You may also see an oversaturated or desaturated color. The saturation of a color determines how bright or dull it is.
There are many more shades of colors, but these are the fundamentals you need to understand to choose effective color combinations, which we’ll talk about now.
Also Read: What Should Be Considered For Optimising A Mobile Website?
Consider combining color schemes
Your goal is to choose a color scheme for your website design. What does this imply? Looking for a good color combination! Your color scheme may include multiple color combinations, depending on how many colors you end up working with.
Understanding color nuances is essential when considering color combinations for your website. You need to understand why some colors compliment each other and change the colors to suit your project better.
Color theory is great for advising us on which colors go well together. So when it comes to choosing colors for your palette, there are a few more advanced aspects of color theory that can help you determine which colors are best for you.
We mentioned earlier how colors are combined to create new colors, but we also need to consider how different colors are combined. The color combinations are classified into five types: complementary, complementary divided, triads and tetradic, analogous and monochrome.
- On the chromatic circle, the complementary colors are opposed to each other. A complementary color scheme will include a warm color and a cool color. A popular complementary pair is red and green.
- The split complementary colors consist of base color and two colors adjacent to the complementary of the base color.
- Colors in triads and tetrads have similar relationships. Colors evenly spaced on the color wheel are used in triads (such as red, blue, and yellow). Tetradic colors are four colors made up of two complementary pairs (red, green, blue, and orange).
- On the color wheel, analogous colors are close to each other. Therefore, analogous colors, such as green and yellow-green, are extremely similar.
- Finally, monochrome colors are simply different shades of the same color. This is done through the use of tints, shades and tones.
Think of these color combinations as your tools. You won’t have to worry about your colors clashing because they all work.
Now that you know the exact combinations you can use, combine them to create a powerful and attractive color scheme.
Maintain simplicity
How many colors should I use on my website? There are no fixed rules, but simplicity is the key to your website design, including colors. It may seem like it can get complicated, but it isn’t. Instead, think about simplicity when choosing a color scheme. A complicated and loaded color scheme often clouds the eye.
Keeping it simple has two important advantages.
Perhaps the most important benefit is that the simplicity makes it easy to link a color scheme. Everything will look unified if you only use a few colors at work. (At least if you’ve used one of the color schemes mentioned above).
Another plus is that viewers don’t have to put in the effort to figure out what’s going on. This is one of the characteristics of a great website. Your users will be more confused if you use too many colors.
Also Read: 5 E-commerce Tools To Increase Website Traffic And Revenue
Make your colors stand out with contrast color
Then think about your contrast color! It is one of the most important design elements you can use when developing your website color scheme.
This is because the contrast creates an impact. Contrast, in particular, can draw attention to specific areas of the page.
For example, the orange CTA on a blue background is a great example of contrast in action. Complementary colors compliment each other so well because they contrast. There’s a surprising amount of CTA color choice research that shows buttons that stand out convert better.
So if you want your users to notice an element, make it stand out from the rest of the page, or at least the design elements closest to it.
Make your brand more visible
Finally, think about how your branding will affect your color scheme. Likely, certain colors are already associated with your brand. If so, you can use your existing color palette to help you create a color scheme for your website. However, you may need to change your brand colors. If any of the colors you’ve chosen has a negative connotation, maybe you should reconsider it.
The key here is to consider the color associations people have with the colors you have chosen. Are these associations in line with the values on which you have built your brand?
It’s also helpful to look at what other brands have done.
What are the best color combinations for websites?
There is no perfect answer to this question because it all depends on your business and your target audience.
Again, it is essential to understand what different colors mean to different people. Certain colors have been shown to elicit specific emotions in the majority of people, so let’s take a look at some of these examples of what colors mean:
- Yellow represents youth and optimism. Use it to draw attention to yourself. It is generally not suitable as a background or main site color.
- The red color represents energy. It creates a sense of urgency and increases the heart rate. Excellent for attracting impulse buyers.
- Blue evokes feelings of trust and security. This is why many banks use it in their logos and marketing. To target budget-conscious people, navy blue or dark blue are used.
- Green creates an impression of wealth. It is relaxing and straightforward. Teal is a color that can be used to appeal to people on a budget.
- Pink is a feminine and romantic color. It is marketed to women, girls and traditional buyers.
- Black is a powerful and elegant color. Use it to market luxury items and attract impulse shoppers.
- Purple is a calming and calming color. Anti-aging products are frequently marketed under this term.
- Orange is an aggressive and uplifting color. Excellent for calls to action and impulse buying.
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