How to Choose Website Color Schemes
As you’re building a website, it’s important to consider the color choices you make. Your website is a direct reflection of your brand, which means you should already have color palettes that align. Just in case you were wondering how important the use of color is, 85% of consumers usually purchase based on color. Your color wheel is based on your brand identity and shouldn’t be taken lightly. In fact, there’s a color psychology and color theory that directly correlates to your brand’s personality and voice that you should be using in all your communications, including your website.
What does this mean? It means your color scheme is very important. Color is a huge aspect of branding, and your website colors are very important. Colors evoke feelings and increase brand recognition. Your website color palettes shouldn’t be contingent on what you think looks good but should center around what works for your brand and web design. That means the buttons and other accents used should have symmetry to help with conversions.
Should your website have a color scheme?
Every website should have a selection of website color palettes that work with your brand. The overall goal is to increase engagement. This means you must carefully plan what you are going to have on your website and how things will be arranged. Your landing page is the first thing visitors will see. It should be aesthetically pleasing. The content presented is also a factor, but it should have the right color combinations working together for maximum effect.
The user experience is key. The right website colors improve that experience. Here’s how:
Recognition
If people don’t know about your brand, you’re not doing a very good job. That means you need brand recognition. Your website should be the most accurate representation of your brand. If there’s nothing worth noting on your website, will your visitors return? If you already have a website color palette, this makes things a lot easier than starting from scratch.
Perception
Colors help shape the perception of a brand. It helps people to understand your tone. Color psychology is very important in this area. Brands all have different elements of their personality that should be conveyed in their color palettes for websites.
Order
The colors you use also have a special order. There are certain relationships between colors that help them play off each other. Bright colors and primary colors have their own harmony. Monochromatic color schemes are also popular, but there is one specific color presented in a variety of shades and intensities. Using one of the three basic types of color palettes, triadic, monochromatic, or analogous is usually the go-to for website designers who don’t have a color palette to work with.
Elements
An accent color is used to make certain elements on the website stand out. This could be a button with a call to action, the menu bar, header or footer, or text that needs attention. Using the isolation effect can help in maximizing the impact. These colors help people remember important aspects of your website.
Simplification
When you have your website palette colors in place, it makes it even easier to use a website builder or other design programs to get your creatives designed. This makes the process simple and saves time when designing each page of the website. Before beginning the process, having guidelines in place that indicate what color a button should be, what size and color text, hover colors, links, and other elements like background colors makes sense.
How to choose the right website color scheme
The colors of your website should directly reflect your brand identity. That means your purpose, values, and personality should resonate through those colors. When choosing the right color scheme, you must also consider the products and services you offer. Once you get beyond your primary color, your secondary colors should complement everything else. Best practices are one or two colors used with the primary color. The last thing you want is for everything to look busy.
These colors should be on the website but should also be an integral part of email design, any eCommerce sites, social media images, and more. It’s easy to drift toward popular colors, but those trends never last.
Companies that take the time to really understand their audience and customers have a better chance of choosing colors that make an impact and won’t ever have to change. Your color scheme should be timeless and will look just as good 10 or 20 years from now. These types of companies have longevity. They are known to refresh their appearance, but the color scheme remains the same.
Choose your background
Your background color is key because it takes up the most space on your website. In most cases, there are two options. You can have a softer variation of your primary color to keep your branding in place or use an off-white color which is more common.
Consider your typeface
The typeface is what the text looks like. You want to make sure that color complements everything else. While most people opt for black and white, many companies don’t use straight black. Black on white can lead to eyestrain. Using a gray color is much more palatable and pleasing to the eye.
Colors
Your website colors should have the right saturation or brightness. One of the most important rules to remember is that the saturation should be consistent. You can vary the saturation for different effects. It’s always good to use a tool that can help you get to what you want faster. A palette generator can help you find a color scheme that reflects your overall brand.
To choose the right color scheme for your website design, have a main primary color, then have two additional colors that complement the main color. Choose a background color that can be softer than the primary color. Choose the typeface color.
