Picking the best color schemes for websites does not always come easy. When picking a color scheme for your website, you actually make a huge branding decision. The color scheme for websites should resemble the colors of your brand. Believe it or not, your brand colors tell your customers a lot about your business.
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Choosing Website Colors
Colors schemes for websites express a lot of information about the business. Colors bring out certain emotions and thoughts for the viewer. Different colors represent different meanings, especially in the case of advertising. Follow this list of color associations to use the psychology of colors when marketing.
Red
Red creates a feeling of urgency. You can use red in color schemes for websites to promote clearance sales. Red also relates to movement, excitement, and passion, red urges people to act.
- Example: Target uses red in their logo to really stand out and create a sense of excitement when sopping there.
Green
Green creates a feeling of harmony. You can use green in color schemes for websites to calm customers or promote environmental concerns. It relates to health, calmness, and nature. Green also pushes balance and thought-out decisions.
- Example: Starbucks uses green in their logo to create a sense of calmness while taking your coffee break during your stressful day.
Purple
Purple creates a feeling of creativity. You can use purple in color schemes for websites to push beauty and anti-aging products. Purple relates to royalty, wisdom, and respect and encourages problem-solving.
- Example: Hallmark uses purple in its logo to create a sense of wisdom in its products like greeting cards.
Blue
Blue creates a feeling of reliability. You can use blue in color schemes for websites to display trust in your brand. It relates to peace, tranquility, and security, and can stimulate productivity.
- Example: As a car manufacturer, Honda relies on the color blue to show reliability.
Orange and Yellow
The colors orange and yellow both create a feeling of cheerfulness. You can use yellow in color schemes for websites to pull in impulsive buyers or window shoppers. Relating to joy and happiness, yellow promotes optimism. Use both colors with caution as yellow can trigger babies to cry and orange can lead to a sense of caution.
- Example: Snapchat uses yellow to appeal to a younger target audience through happiness and excitement.
Black
Black creates a feeling of intelligence. You can use black in color schemes for websites to attract sophisticated buyers. It relates to authority, power, stability, and strength. Black also displays confidence.
- Example: Chanel uses black in their logo to represent luxury and elegance.
Gray
Gray creates a feeling of practicality. You can use gray in color schemes for websites to attract mature customers. Relating to solidarity, gray displays stability.
- Example: Lexus uses light gray in its branding to show luxury and elegance combined with stability.
White
White creates a feeling of purity. You can use white in color schemes for websites to display minimalism as a brand. Representing neutrality, cleanliness, and safety, white can spark creativity by giving the feeling of a clean slate to work with.
- Example: Subway uses white in their branding to give their customers the perception the sandwich is a blank slate with endless possibilities for creation.
Building a Website Using Color Schemes
Incorporating color schemes for websites makes up one important aspect of website design. As explained, different colors can give the viewer different feelings, thoughts, and even push certain actions. Make sure to do the right amount of research to find the best website colors, as well as other design details.
You may want to use a website development company to help your brand stand out. In this case, you need to make sure to properly communicate with the company you work with. In order to keep a consistent brand image on your website, make sure to tell the company about specific design features like what color schemes you want on your website.
Building Your Own Website
If you choose to build your own website instead of working with another company, you have many resources available. Some websites will provide you tips such as what tabs to include, how to write the content, and how to choose a color scheme. Other websites and software will give you actual hands-on tools to design your own website.
One great software for creating websites is called WordPress. There are many reasons why you should use WordPress for your business website. As free software, WordPress acts as a content management system, allowing edit your website without coding. WordPress includes a variety of options to design websites from using multimedia to creating color schemes for websites.
Website Color Schemes
As we know, color schemes for websites impact the perception of branding. While website visitors may not look out for colors, the colors will lead to certain thoughts and feelings. When you make changes to your site, you always want to keep your website color schemes in mind. Knowing how to maintain your website without majorly impacting your branding is very important. Even when you give your website an entire makeover, do not stray from your brand colors.
Brand Aesthetic
Brand aesthetics define the visual tone of your brand through consistent use of certain features. Features of brand aesthetic on websites include things like font styles and color schemes for websites. You can go about defining your brand aesthetic in a few different ways. Some options include using other brands as examples, creating a Pinterest board as inspiration, or hiring a brand designer.
Brand aesthetic makes up just one aspect of a bigger picture for your website. Website UX makes up the entire user experience of a website. Websites for businesses gain higher chances of conversions or sales when users have a good experience. By identifying and sticking with thought-out brand aesthetics, including color schemes for websites, business websites become much more effective.
Website Color Palettes
Color schemes for websites are typically designed by using color palettes. A website color palette is made up of all of the colors you choose for the design of your website. Color palettes play an important role in branding as colors greatly increase brand recognition. Once you have your color palette set, you should stick with the color palette throughout the entire design of your website.
Building a Color Palette
But, how do you make a color palette? Three simple steps will help you build a color palette for the color scheme of your website:
#1: Choose a Base Color
In order to begin building a color palette, you will want to start with a single base color. You can choose your base color from one of the colors on your logo if you already have one. Ideally, your logo colors should be included in your brand color palette. Also, you can scroll up and read about how certain colors are used in marketing to choose your base color.
If you have chosen a base color, you do not have to select a shade of the color just yet. Start with a basic color and use a color wheel tool or brand design tools to find the perfect shade. The color you decide on will become your true base color.
#2: Choose a Color Scheme
After deciding your base color, you will choose a color scheme to use for the rest of your color palette. You can choose from a couple of options for color schemes such as monochrome and complementary. Monochrome color schemes use different shades of your base color to create your color palette. Complementary color schemes use colors from opposite sides of the color wheel. The colors can include various different shades of the chosen colors.
Different color schemes will create different feelings. For example, a monochrome color scheme will create a sense of harmony. Monochrome color schemes include colors that fall next to each other on the color wheel, creating that sense of harmony. If the idea of harmony resembles your brand, a monochrome color scheme could make up your color palette.
When selecting your colors and color scheme for a website, you will want to take a look at the emotions and thoughts the colors evoke. Do not get overwhelmed with the tons of options for your color palette. Identify which colors best represent your brand in aesthetic and meaning and go from there. Typically, four colors make up a good target for a color palette.
#3: Implement Your Color Palette
Lastly, you will want to put that color palette to good use. Do not forget, your color palette does not just make up the background colors of your website. Feel free to get as creative as your mind allows when using your colors throughout your website. Although, be careful when using certain colors like orange which can create a sense of caution for the viewer.
When designing your website, take the time to really make sense of the colors you choose. Your base color does not have to stand out any more than the rest of your color palette. When deciding colors for your color palette, you should take the time to think about your selections. Unfortunately, building a brand is not as simple as second-grade art class. Luckily, you now know how to pick the best color schemes for websites to design top-notch branding.
FAQs:
- What colors work best on a website?
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