Color is enchanting, invigorating, powerful, and, most importantly, convincing. Without it, life would be monotonous and colorless. However, color encompasses more than what the theoretical trichromatic human eye can see. The psychology of color is fascinating, and it heavily influences the selection of brand and website colors. This is because colors elicit various emotions and behaviors in humans. The finest colors for websites have the potential to boost brand recognition, income, and user engagement. This entails studying the psychology and significance behind popular colors, as well as investigating how various web color themes and palettes function.
How to Choose the Best Website Colors?
When it comes to online color palettes, there are a few crucial principles to follow. These are part of other key website design best practices that apply whether you are an expert website designer or a beginner using a website-building tool.
Find a web color scheme that fits your brand
When it comes to online color palettes, one key recommended practice stands out. A website’s color scheme must be consistent with the person’s or business’s branding requirements. This design rule ensures that the website is recognizable. If you don’t have one yet, now is the time to start planning your branding.
Consult the Branding Guidelines for Focus Colors
Your website color palette, particularly the website focus colors, should be based on the branding guide that you, your business, or your clientele follow. Going through it will simplify your effort and result in a design that complements your business identity. Finally, one of the primary purposes of website design and development is to achieve more than just an attractive look.
Take Inspiration from Packaging and Marketing Materials
It’s unusual to begin developing an online store or website without first selecting a logo, brand colors, and typefaces. If this is the case, you may find inspiration in existing brand packaging, logos, and marketing materials. This allows you to establish a color palette for your website based on the most identifiable and popular content.
Refine your web color palette
You do not need to use all of the colors in your branding guidelines or materials. Choosing the most distinct, appealing, and complementary colors to build on is the best way to go. Remember that your top aim should be to increase brand recognition, not to choose your favorite colors or the one that looks the best.
Expand on the Web Color Palette
When developing a website, it is not uncommon for a designer to supplement the main colors with complementing tones. After all, you can’t use bright red on every button, tab, and page backdrop. Not only would this appear unappealing, but it would also confuse users by blurring the line between elements and pages.
How Designers Create the Best Website Color Schemes
Creating the Perfect Web Color Palette: Focus Colors and Complementary Hues
- Concentrate on colors. Focus colors are the colors that web designers select to be central to a website. Bright primary and secondary colors (known as hues), such as red, blue, and yellow, are frequently chosen as focal colors. However, focal colors are often crucial to a brand, connecting it to its website.
- Pure neutrals. You may call black, gray, white, and brown pure neutrals. These colors are suitable for use with practically any focal color. They do not compete with focus colors since they lack identifiable primary or secondary color hues. When applied appropriately, neutrals keep focal colors at the forefront of website color palettes.
- Monochromatic colors are distinct hues, tones, and tints of the same color or hue. They can be created by combining pure black, gray, or white with the original focal color. Monochromes do not conflict with focus colors, making them an excellent color palette option for website design.
- A tint is a color that contains white, however it is also known as pastel. Ideally, you should only employ pastels that share the same base hue as your focal hues. Pastel colors with matching base hues may also be used in website color schemes.
- Shades are colors that have been combined with black. While it is preferable to utilize shades with the same foundation hue as your emphasis colors, such as pastels, they can also be used with complementary base color hues.
- The hues are complementary. In color theory, complementary colors are those that are opposite each other on a color wheel. If your primary color is red, green is its complimentary color, as are orange to blue and purple to yellow. Complementary colors allow you to add additional focal colors that are eye-catching while yet fitting color schemes for websites well.
- White, black, gray, and brown are pure neutrals, meaning they have no particular color hue. However, you can achieve near neutrals by combining a pure neutral with one primary or secondary color hue. It’s ideal to pair near neutrals with emphasis colors that have the same or complimentary base color tones.
Popular Primary and Secondary Focus Colors
The color wheel has six primary hues that are visible to the human eye. The primary color hues are red, blue, and yellow. The three secondary color hues are green, orange, and purple, which are a combination of two primary colors.
These six hues exist on a color wheel and blend together to form a varied spectrum of colors suitable for online color palettes. Each hue falls into one of two categories: cool or warm. Reds, oranges, and yellows are examples of warm hues, whereas purples, blues, and greens are cool. Blues, purples, and greens conjure up images of chilly landscapes and weather, whilst reds, oranges, and yellows do the reverse.
Aside from real-world linkages, each color may elicit specific emotions, sensations, and actions in people and animals. A web design business considers all of these factors when selecting brand colors and, as a result, your website color scheme. The meanings and psychology of colors should be important to your decision, linking to your branding and corporate philosophy. Here are explanations of the significance of different colors, as well as the psychology behind their use in branding and website color palettes.
Red for food, beverage, and entertainment brands
In nature, the color red is boldly displayed by hot chili peppers, fire, roses, blood, the heart, and dangerous animal marks. Red represents action, hunger, danger, wrath, passion, lust, vigor, life, romance, love, war, ferocity, excitement, and energy. Red makes an appearance in some of the greatest website color schemes due to its relationship with action and powerful positive feelings. Because of its adaptability, red may be found on the websites of firms from a wide range of industries. Popular brands that use red as a focus color for their branding and website design color schemes are:
- Coca-Cola
- YouTube
- Netflix
- Kellogg’s
- Red Bull
Scarlet, crimson, ruby, carmine, vermillion, coral, maroon, burgundy, and mahogany are all colors of red.
Orange for Travel, Leisure, Craft, and DIY Brands
Orange is red’s slightly sunnier and more relaxed twin, linked with sunsets, tropical regions, and acidic foods. This color’s psychology is based on energetic and enjoyable sensations like happiness, brightness, creativity, childishness, and laughter. You may have observed that yellow appears frequently in children’s food and beverage branding, as well as “fun” adult products. Because of its affinity with warm weather and sunsets, it may appear in travel companies’ branding and website designs. Popular brands that utilize orange as a focus color for their branding and as part of their website colors are:
- Nickelodeon
- Fanta
- Jet Star Airlines
- Harley-Davidson
- Hooters
- Etsy
Orange colors include tangerine, bronze, pumpkin, dawn, marigold, apricot, rust, ginger, and honey.
Yellow for children’s, manufacturing, and convenience brands
Yellow is another lively and vibrant color that evokes sentiments of happiness, speed, spontaneity, youth, productivity, and optimism. Similar to orange, it is connected with sunsets, summer, and citrus, as well as lighting, flowers, natural produce, DIY, and manufacturing. Brands who wish to convey a sense of cheerfulness, expedience, enthusiasm, productivity, and happiness use this color in their branding. Interestingly, yellow is a favorite hue for many children, and it is frequently utilized in web design color palettes and kid branding. Yellow is used as a focus color in branding and web design schemes by the following brands:
- Pokémon
- McDonald’s
- Ferrari
- National Geographic
- Amazon
- DHL
- Best buy
Yellow colors include canary, lemon, butter, mustard, amber, flax, gold, saffron, corn, and butterscotch.
Green for eco-conscious, wellness, health, and wealth-oriented brands
Green is often considered one of the most natural colors, connected with plants, trees, forests, and nature. It stimulates feelings of calm, peace, health, self-discovery, exploration, conscientiousness, and spiritual development. However, green is commonly associated with money, wealth, and envy. Green is commonly used in website color schemes by eco-conscious, sustainable, and green enterprises, as well as those providing health products and foods. Several healthcare website designs primarily feature green. Nonetheless, green is a wonderful choice for firms seeking to portray exclusivity, money, and old-world luxury. The following brands utilize green in their branding and website colors:
- Hello Fresh
- Whole Foods
- Land Rover
- Perrier
- TD Bank
- Starbucks
Green colors include forest, hunter, emerald, mint, olive, lime, moss, pistachio, fern, seafoam, jade, and sage.
Blue for technology and communications brands, as well as government organizations
Blue can be peaceful and pleasant, much like the ocean or a cool drink of water. The color provides a calming impact, emphasizing rational action and deliberation over impulsive impulses. It is also connected with technology and communication, both in the physical world and through digital means, making it one of the greatest colors for websites in these fields. It is appealing to the eye and less prone to elicit feelings of anxiety or hurry. Many businesses, including government websites, utilize this color in their branding to appear helpful and trustworthy. Blue is a good color palette for an educational website. Brands that have successfully used blue website color schemes include:
- Samsung
- PayPal
- Windows
- Skype
Purple is suitable for luxury, women’s, esoteric, and spiritual brands
Purple is a bit of an outlier in the branding industry, exuding a quirky distinctive vibe. It is commonly connected with knowledge, royalty, spirituality, luxury, magic, enlightenment, and imagination, as well as being very feminine. Purple is a popular choice for online color themes among businesses and brands in the entertainment, luxury food, and gift industries. However, it is crucial to remember that, while more women prefer this hue than males, the reverse is not always true. Perhaps this is one of the primary reasons why many firms marketing to both men and women avoid the hue. The following brands utilize purple in their web color themes:
- Taco Bell
- Cadbury
- Yahoo
- Wonka
- Twitch
- Hallmark
Purple colors include magenta, lavender, violet, indigo, eggplant, amethyst, plum, lilac, iris, mauve, and grape.
The Best Background Web Color Palettes: Neutrals
Choosing vivid primary and secondary colors as website focus colors is an obvious decision. Colors such as red, blue, green, purple, orange, yellow, and pink are good accent colors since they are eye-catching and memorable. Choosing a custom-mixed color for your business also raises brand awareness. If you’re wondering what the greatest website color palettes for backdrops are, try these options.
- Pure and near-neutrals. Neutrals are the greatest background colors for websites since they are less visually appealing and gentler than focus colors. The less brilliantly or vividly colored, the better.
- Pastels, hues, tints, and monochrome colors. Pastels, tints, hues, and monochromes are also suitable. These backdrop color selections direct the viewer’s attention to focal colors and elements such as tabs, buttons, and text.
- Tinted textures, drawings, and photos. A background can be gradient, textured, or opaque, rather than just a flat neutral color. A web design business may also use graphics or images as backgrounds. These photos are commonly edited to be semi-opaque, lighter, or darker. Alternatively, you can tone them to fit your website’s main colors.
Conclusion
Website colors differ depending on a company’s industry and the image it seeks to project to the public. Primary and secondary colors are popular options for website color schemes. Monochromes, neutrals, hues, and pastels all play important supporting roles and make excellent background colors. However, there is no definitive list of the best colors for websites because the ones you choose should be based on your current business branding and ethos. Remember that both offline and online branding are important factors in website design, and you should prioritize brand awareness and memorability. Then, establish a site color scheme that your clients would recognize readily.
