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If you are a web designer and facing issues in choosing a color scheme for your website, you are not alone. Many web designers got stuck on what color scheme they should use to grab the customer's attention and convey a solid message to them.
There are many ways to choose colors for your website. You can either pick a specific color palette or go with a random selection. When picking colors randomly, you'll need to think about the overall feel of your design. Keep in mind that if you're using many bright colors, you might want to tone down the saturation of those hues.
So Today, in this blog, I will share 3 easy and simple steps to choosing the right colors for your website. But before doing that, let's talk about why choosing the right color is crucial for a website?
Colors are the first thing that people notice anywhere. They enable customers to make the first judgment without knowing about your services. It has been observed that 80-90% of selections of products are based on their colors. It means they are also helpful to boost the conversion rate of different websites' products.
Colors play a crucial role in creating brand awareness. According to a university of Loyola study, ""colors increase brand recognition by up to 80%"." Each brand has a specific and unique color scheme that makes it distinctive from others.
Whenever you talk about a brand, its significant color scheme comes to your mind instantly. For example, if you speak about Coca-Cola, its red color immediately pop-up into your mind. In the same way, the Blue of DELL and the orange color of Fanta are also clearly having their own presence. All these colors build a brand image in the mind of people.
That is the reason when you see red cans of soft drinks, the Coca-Cola brand logo instantly pop-up into your mind.
Choosing a color scheme for a website is not just that you choose colors of your or client's choice, but such type of color should use, which strengthens the website and branding of the business.
Studies suggest that whenever you see a brand asset or its website, you subconsciously judge it within 90 seconds of initial viewing. As up to 90% of this judgment is based on colors only.
People are greatly influenced by colors as they leave an impression on their minds. If you consume colors carefully, you can establish favorable judgment in people's minds. In simple words, color is the most efficient and immediate way of setting a first good impression.
It'sIt's been seen that many websites benefit from their color schemes to increase the conversion rate of their products. For example, Betamax, known for its screen projection, gets better results when they change its call-to-action button from blue to red.
Simply put, if your call-to-action button is more appealing, it can increase the conversion rate on your website.
Remember that You cannot put random colors to make a brand identity; before doing this, you must know about color psychology and color theory.
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To know how to choose colors for your website, you first have basic knowledge of color theory, which helps you understand how color works well together.
The color theory revolves around the color wheel, which describes the relationship between different colors.
It includes three types of colors: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
The primary colors are parent one as red, blue, and yellow are primary colors.
On the other hand, Secondary colors are created by mixing two primary colors. As orange, green, and violet are secondary colors.
And last but not least, tertiary colors are created by combining primary and secondary colors. They are named based on their parent colors, e.g., blue-green, red-violet, red-orange, etc.
If you want a detailed study on color theory, check out this article.
The color scheme is one of the crucial parts of color theory.
It suggests what kind of color combinations you should use in web design.
There are many color schemes, but we will discuss basic color schemes here. Three commonly used color schemes are monochromatic, complementary, and analogous colors.
Monochromatic: when a single hue is used with tints (a color with black added to it), shades (color with white added to it), and tone (a color with gray added to it), such a kind of color scheme is monochromatic. Using the correct ratio can be a perfect color scheme for web design.
Another one is complementary, in which two opposite colors of a color wheel make a web design color scheme, e.g., blue and orange, yellow and purple, red and green are complementary colors. Complimentary colors are made of warm and cool colors, and both give a nice balance.
Web designers also love to use this as it combines bright and dark colors that clearly show the elements on the web page and facilitate the user's readability.
The third one is analogous, in which three or more adjacent colors in a color wheel are used to make a color scheme.
Web designers also use these color palettes as they are easy to draw and pleasant to the eye.
Understand color psychology in choosing colors:
The role of color psychology is vital in web design as it helps to understand why we should use a particular color for a website.
If you are working for a brand and already have their logo, you do not need to struggle with choosing colors for that brand as you simply put their logo color on their website. But if your clients do not have a logo or any other preferred colors, you have to understand color psychology for selecting the right colors for their brand.
When we focus on web design, colors are significant as they trigger people's emotions. So we should carefully use colors to convey the right message to customers. They promote any type of emotion that you want from your visitors.
For choosing the right colors for a website, you should know the meaning of each color as it is crucial for selecting the right color.
Blue; gives vibes of loyalty, sincerity, trust, wisdom
Pink: promote friendship, harmony, gentleness, warmth
White is; the sign of purity, innocence, peace, cleanliness
Yellow: youthful, optimistic, friendly, energetic
Green: nature, health, fresh, peaceful, relaxed make it suitable for nature-related websites.
Orange: success, determination, comfort, freedom, encouragement make it a good choice for positive messaging
Purple; power, spirituality, nobility, mystery
Black; royal, elegant, sophistication, dramatic, formal
Red: typically associated with love, romance, danger, intensity, strength
Each color refers to a specific meaning and cannot be used for any brand. For example, the green color refers to nature and health, so it can be used by businesses offering natural products.
In the same way, many banks use blue colors, representing trust, wisdom, and loyalty.
But remember, it is not a rule that your website will stand out if you are using colors according to website needs. It is also possible that websites that do not follow color psychology stand out compared to their competitors. Because it also depends upon how a designer plays with colors to create stunning color pallets.
Now you have an idea of which colors is best for your brand.
Now we have basic knowledge about color theory and color psychology, we can combine colors to make perfect color pallets. Let'sLet's discuss 3 easy steps to choosing the right colors for your website like a pro.
One of the most crucial steps in choosing the right color for your brand is choosing a dominant color.
This would be a critical choice as the dominant color covers most space of your website. It could be the color of your background. For example, in the case of flux, violet color is dominant, made by combining blue and purple.
These colors are not selected randomly but rather than selection based on their meanings, as Blue represents loyalty, comfort, and reliability, and purple represents royalty, success, and wisdom, which is according to the services we are providing. When both of these combine, it creates a dominant color.
In the same way, in the case of Macdonald's, you have seen red color as the dominant color and orange as secondary one. You should keep in mind that it is very important to choose the primary color of your website in the best way as it impacts users positively or negatively.
You can also check out this video to understand how to choose colors for web design.
After choosing primary color, now look for secondary or complementary color and assents.
Assents are colors that gives a spark in your website to highlight any aspect e.g. call-to-action button.
When choosing colors for your website, keep in mind that they should complement each other. If you have two shades of green, then make sure that they are not too similar. This can create visual confusion and cause users to lose focus on what they're trying to accomplish.
The best technique I use to choose complementary colors, and assents is using a website named "mycolor.space", where I put my primary/dominant color and generate ideas of complementary and accent colors.
Here you can get almost every color combination that works well with your dominant color.
Ok, you have completed the 1st step to choose a primary color for your website and also done choosing two other colors. Now the last step is to combine them with a 60-30-10 ratio.
But before doing that, let's discuss the meaning of this ratio and how we can use it.
Basically, when you select three colors for your website and combine them so that one color covers 60% of the website, the second cover 30%, and the last one cover 10%, such kind of color mixing is called the 60-30-10 rule. This ratio is helpful to create a balanced color palette for your site.
If you visit my website “www.flux-academy.com” you will notice that I use the same technique on my website. This ratio makes color mixing easier and faster.
In the same way, Greenlist uses green as the primary color, white as a complementary color, and pink as their accent color.
If you want to use a specific color scheme throughout your website, it's best to stick with a single theme. Using different colors for different sections of your site can confuse visitors and distract them from their intended purpose.
I hope this strategy is helpful for you to choose better colors for your website.
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