I need help choosing just the right background colour for my next website. It’s a webmaster site (yah, another webmaster site nobody will visit but what the hell...), not for profit since it’s more of a personal project... so I want it to look good, even at the expense of simplicity (to a point). White is great for reading, a bit dull to look at. Black can be sleek but it’s annoying to read light text on a dark background. I’m not too sure about coloured backgrounds, I like them but can't decide what works best... DP is using green/black on green and it’s not bad. My thought was mixing a few colour combos on the homepage and archive pages, but individual posts/articles would be displayed on white backgrounds for easy readability. The archive will grow and pack a lot of good content into the site (over time) so I fully expect people to spend time reading it and therefore need to make the experience as pleasant as possible. Any ideas? Have you seen a site with good usage of uncommon colours? Please help, the last thing the Internet needs is another boring website, or even worse, a hacked up attempt to make a boring website interesting through poorly chosen colours! Pete.
looking flashy, for most sites, should not be more important than being easy to read. dark on light is a classic for a reason.
How about something subtle like- #E5F2FF or #FFFFCC or #E6FFCC I usually just screw around w/ this until something clicks- http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
I agree, for most sites... I've already got those kinds of sites, but as this one will not make me money, I care more about the personal satisfaction of having a kickass looking site. That is assuming that I succeed in making it a kickass looking site. Your comment is noted and appreciated, I also prefer "easy on the eyes" websites. Does anyone have a link to contribute? Any personal favourites as far as colours or typography are concerned? How about use of images?
how much of a rush are you in? chances are what appeals to you will be different from what appeals to us. I've got a whole seperate bookmarks category for layouts I like, kinda handy when you have no idea what to tell a designer you want I'd just take a week, browse a lot, and find sites you like.
No rush... I've been browsing other sites (and bookmarking a few) for a while. I've done a bit of work modifying my WordPress theme and some minor functionality mods, now it's time to work on the colours. In all honesty, I've always prefered to go totally white with black (or very dark) text and a single link colour throughout... with no (or almost no) detail whatsoever, or take advantage of a nice template but that's starting to bore me. I want to do something different, even if it's short-lived. If you have a list of sites that you find particularly interesting (design wise), feel free to post or PM...