Choosing Website Colors

Are you in the process of designing your website, but unsure as to which colors to use?

Some designers will choose colors that they personally find pleasing, perhaps using their favorite colors. Since color affects the mood of website visitors, designers should treat the association of color as seriously as the design of graphics and layout. Colors can convey messages, invoke feelings and emphasize areas of interest.

Many web designers often overlook the issues of color in web design. When choosing colors for your web site there are three main areas that should be addressed.

1) The psychological effect of colors,

2) The effect on the readability of your site, and

3) The complementary choice of colors for your background, graphics, links, and text.

Showing attention to these three areas will help you to create an effective and professional website. Keep in mind that choosing colors for your website might not come easily. You might spend hours deciding on a color scheme. Achieving color harmony is a science, and knowing how to arrange colors is an art.

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Listed below are a few characteristics of color that should always be considered when designing your graphics.

• Colors have an effect on our emotions within 90 seconds of viewing.

• Color choices can motivate, impress, and persuade your prospect to buy from you.

• Colors not only intensify the item, they greatly influence our behavior.

• The effects of color differ among different cultures.

• Color choices alone send specific messages to your viewers.

Given the fact that people respond more to non-verbal cues than verbal cues, it's all-important that you choose the corresponding colors for the emotional trigger you want to trip.

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The following colors are associated with certain emotions or qualities in North American culture.

White - Suggests truthfulness, purity, clean, devotion, mild, and contemporary. White is the best color for a background color on the web. For business it can be refreshing and sterile.

Black - Suggests elegance, boldness, power, authority, seductive, evil, sophistication and classic. Black is the ideal choice for text on a light background. It is hard on the eyes when used as a background on web sites.

Red - Suggests strength, sex, excitement, passion, speed, danger, aggressiveness, and demands attention. In business it is associated with debt. Red is the most emotionally intense color. It stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing.

Blue - Suggests security, trust, reliability, coolness, faithfulness, belonging, and dignity. Blue is the most popular color. It is the second most popular color. In business it suggests fiscal responsibility and sanctuary.

Green - Suggests abundance, health, fertility, freedom, healing, nature, growth, jealously, and cool. In business it suggests status and wealth. It is the easiest color on the eye.

Brown - Suggests effectiveness, politeness, richness, and helpfulness. Brown is the color of earth, and is abundant in nature.

Gray - Suggests earnestness, authority, and practicality. In business it suggests traditional and conservative.

Pink - Suggests softness, sweet, femininity, well-being, innocence, and nurture.

Purple - Suggests dignity, spirituality, royal, luxury, wealth, authority, mournfulness, and sophistication. In business it is upscale. Purple is favored by the artistic.

Orange - Suggests playfulness, pleasure, cool, warmth, cheer, vibrant, strength, endurance, and ambition.

Yellow - Suggests sunshine, warmth, cheer, happiness, cowardice, and jealousy. In business it is appealing to intellectual types and is good for accents. Yellow enhances concentration, increases metabolism, and is the most difficult color for the eye to take in.

Gold - Suggests expensive, and prestige.

Silver - Suggests cold, scientific, and prestige.

Whenever you begin to choose your colors, think about your target market. What emotions do you want to evoke? Give some thought to the current emotion of your prospect and to the message you want to send. Then choose your colors.

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Note: This is an article I found a little while ago regarding the use of color in design. The principles brought out in the article can be applied to web design and print design also.
Source 1 | Source 2

 

Colors might have some psychological effects, but I would say site design (as a whole, including a decent color scheme), useablity, navigation, content etc. are much more important factors than color. I also think it's a mistake to generalize. I believe diffenent colors will have different effects from individual to individual

 

It is true that color (or 'colour' in the UK) should be considered carefully when designing a website or anything else for that matter. Personally I would not have chosen the greenish hues used here at the DP forum. But that is just down to my own taste and in practice it works very well.

One thing that definitely should not be overlooked though is the issue of colour blindness. To ignore this could potentially deny access to a website for many.

T

 

Amsterdam - very good point, something that exam briefly touched on too. That is why I'm always surprised to see so many people who use red.

From a sales perspective it screams "stop" and from an accessibility issue, it's not visually friend for colorblindness.

 

I love black & orange, with light grey text. it just screams "I'm a badass". I use it on a few of my sites. It's different, and actually easier on the eyes than you might expect. Not appropriate for all sites though.

 

I honestly never cared much for that combo, but I saw a young man who recently launched a movie review forum using black/gold and I was honestly surprised at how impressive it looked. Take a gander at http://www.onlinemoviereviews.co.uk/

 

Great post. I have come across that information before but often forget when I start a new site.

 

Don't we all

When I was in the military, I would always remind my soldiers that "Complacency Kills" ... funny (rather sad) how often I find myself in violation of my own advice ...

 

Colour Lovers and Color Match. (This one works only in IE).
Choosing color (or "colour" in the U.K.).

 

I say color, you say colour » can't we all just get along?

 

The importance of colors in a web design cannot be understated, although sometimes the colors should be.

I sometimes find it more difficult choosing a color scheme I'm happy with than anything else to do with design.

good post.

 

Go Black It Saves Energy!

 

This is rather useful. I never thought that colors would invoke feelings.

 

silver n blue don't look that good!
Tho i think it may be the big text that says this Account Has Been Suspended!
not sure tho!

 

god silver and blue are horrible and dull and sadly over used.

 

right in the middle of choosing colors for my next design and found this thread. aah an enlightenment. thx