Basically, when setting out to design a website, a top priority is perfecting your website’s color palette, or rather your website color schemes. And, one of the best ways to do this is to look at existing websites and then research your competitors. Luckily, we’ve done the leg work for you and compiled a list of website color schemes that work perfectly for each brand.
But, hang on a minute… What if you already have a website color palette in mind that you know you want to use? Well, sure, that’s a great start but it’s important to consider what you want your website color scheme to say before rushing into anything… We can start by considering color psychology for website color schemes from the fine artist, Josef Albers.
Josef Albers — a master of color — devoted his practice to understanding color and how it affects the onlooker’s mood and adapts to different contexts. A huge part of his research involved looking at the various ways colors interact with each other. Take, for example, his painting below: the combination of dark green and orange feels jarring to look at if we are not wrong.
But, as you can see, in pairing the green with grey, Albers creates balance with a much calmer, contemporary mood for the audience. Findings like this can be used to inform design choices; they’ll help you to choose web design colors to suit your services and accentuate your brand identity for communicating it to consumers.
The Basic Color Psychology Principles
This conversation constitutes an introduction to color psychology, meaning the study of colors and how they affect us on a cerebral level. As Mark Rothko exhibited with his namesake Color Field paintings, certain colors demand certain reactions.
So, when we’re considering website color schemes, it’s important to recognize how different tones and hues affect our mood. For example, if we were to design a website for a sustainability charity then we might use shades of green and blue because they invoke feelings of trust, nature, and health. In reality, certain website color schemes can highly influence people’s moods.
Ultimately, you can also use these website color schemes to control how your target users perceive your web business as well. Exactly why has Facebook always stuck to its blue color scheme? Is it really because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green color blind, meaning blue appears extraordinarily vivid to him? Well, yes, but also because blue is the most universally-loved color. In fact, blue appears in over half of all logos. With that in mind, we’ll take a look at the basic psychological color principles.
What Website Color Schemes Are All About
Technically, Website Color Schemes entail the journey that your webmasters have partaken in in order to come up with the right website layout and appearance color choices. Eventually, when it comes to your target User Experience (UX), it’s one of the key factors to consider since it has a very big impact on your overall brand.
According to the QuickSprout team, as far as website color schemes are concerned, there’s a lot to take into consideration when you’re designing any given website. You have to create the layout, set up the site architecture, place Calls To Action (CTAs), and pick your domain name, just to name a few things.
Unfortunately, for many webmasters, all too often, website color schemes are just another afterthought. In that case, many website owners put little to no thought into picking their website color palette. Let alone trending color schemes for websites for that matter. They think, “How important could my website’s colors really be?”
Why Choosing The Right Website Color Schemes Is Important
To begin with, the color choices on your website have a bigger impact on visitors than you might realize. They invoke specific feelings and can be a powerful way to motivate the choices your visitors make. In fact, research shows that people judge products within 90 seconds of exposure — and 90% of that judgment is based on color alone.
Choosing the right colors impacts how your readers perceive your website and brand. Do it well and it can enhance your content’s readability, increase comprehension, and improve learning. Colors are one of the most important elements that add credibility to your website. According to HubSpot, nearly half of the people rank a website in terms of its overall design.
Thus, website design is the number one factor in determining the credibility of any given web-based business. Similarly, the University of Toronto conducted an interesting research study on colors and how they are perceived by individuals. They determined that most people prefer combinations of simple colors. In most cases, just 2 or 3 colors were seen as appealing.
Website Color Schemes Design Sample Project Ideas
As we aforementioned, when it comes to your website layout design, you need to give your customers a terrific experience to get them hooked on your brand. Imagine you launch the perfect website for your business. Everything is flawless — the layout, the performance, the navigation, the copy. It all creates the dream experience for your users, and people rave over it.
Well, you’ll only be able to make that happen if you choose the right website color scheme. That said, we’ll show you exactly how to do that — even if you have no experience in design. Bearing in mind, that color plays an integral role in how we perceive things even in the real world. Consequently, it can radically affect how we/our target visitors perceive our website as well.
Just like we mentioned before, for most webmasters, when it comes to website design, the color scheme often takes a backseat. In the next stage, we are going to share some of the most important tips you can use to create a stunning website color scheme. Whether you have a working theory or aren’t quite sure of the difference between primary and secondary colors.
Overall, these key tips will help you select the ideal color scheme when building your website that wows your users — may it be from scratch or even if you are just doing a revamp. And now, without much ado, let’s get started with a few best samples!
1. Being Professional — Tareq Ismail
You don’t always have to choose a bunch of different colors either. Website color palettes that use shades of gray with the occasional primary color to highlight something are less distracting and allow your audience to focus on what’s important to them. It’s only natural that you choose a powerful yet simple design and color scheme for your own website.
Even if there is more text on the given page, make sure that it’s still simple and easy to read. Rather than using a pure white tone, you may choose a slightly off-white color to blend with a gray and red color palette. This off-white works, particularly, for someone wearing a white shirt in the image on this specific web page. You can also consider subtle hints of red in the text.
It really completes the look, taking a page that would be otherwise boring and making it pop. This is a great option to consider if you’re looking for a color palette that’s professional, simple, and works well with pages that have a bit more text. You can check out this page from Tareq Ismail’s Portfolio to borrow some ideas for your next website color scheme layout design.
Lilac is yet another professional website showcasing a lively and fun-filled moment to its target audience. Flick through any current fashion magazine and you’ll witness this particular purple oozing out from the pages and into your wardrobe. The ecommerce website color schemes — of lilac, rust, and cream — instantly give off curated vibes. It instills trust in its users.
2. Utilizing Soft Tones — Creations Namale
Soft tones are definitely trending in 2020. As an example, Creations Namale is a jewelry brand based in Canada that you can borrow some ideas from. You’ll notice that; their website color schemes are well-muted, classy, and very appealing. It’s a perfect choice for a brand in the fashion industry selling jewelry. The simple tones work well with each other.
And, it also helps the images of jewelry stand out. In addition to the simple color scheme used on this site, the layout takes the same approach. The white space lets the page breathe. Throughout this guide, you’ll see that the use of negative space is just as important as the colors you use. Another notable feature is that there is minimal text. They’re a jewelry brand after all!
Meaning, that they don’t need to rely on a bunch of text to get messages across — the audience doesn’t want that either. The muted colors give off a sense of class and refinement. It’s not in your face. Rather than trying to cram as many products as possible onto one page, take the approach of just one at a time. It gives visitors a chance to experience each product at a time.
The colors help that by supporting the images and highlighting them, rather than distracting them. Desaturation just means taking common colors and muting them. Suffice to say, that this helps the brand to send the right message and not distract from their products.
3. Gradients In White Text — Stripe Website
Most of us already know that Stripe is a very popular payment processing software option for ecommerce companies. As a technology brand, Stripe needs to stay up to date with all of the latest tech trends. But, they also have got unique website color schemes that are quite trendy as well. On the surface, it initially looked a little bit boring and dull, not visually appealing.
But, Stripe made some adjustments with time. Whereby, its current color palette uses a technique that’s been growing in popularity — gradients. Their new page blends vibrant blues that fade into a nice bright cyan with a hint of seafoam green. More so, in order to provide a dynamic background for the white text to jump off of.
By using a gradient scale, Stripe takes a very simple blue color and blends it with different tones to create more texture in the background. The difference between the 2013 site and the 2020 site is like night and day. Even if you’d seen the two homepages without knowing the years they were living, you’d have been able to identify the newer one.
This means, that if your website is currently outdated and looks more like the Stripe site from 2013, try adding color gradients. So that you can give your design layout color palette a more modern outlook to your target audience. Cool blue gradients invoke a sense of reliability and trust in website color schemes. Essentially, it’s everything you’d want from an online bank.
4. Throwback Retro Schemes — Spotify Homepage
Realistically, retro color schemes are also making a big comeback in 2022 and beyond. Lots of top brands are using popular colors from the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s on their websites. But, they are basically putting a modern twist on them quite so well. By incorporating retro elements with modern tastes, they’re able to give new life to old trends.
In addition, they’re also able to evoke specific and familiar feelings in their audience no matter when they grew up. It’s a bit of an oxymoron. How can something be retro and modern at the same time? Well, take a look at the Spotify homepage, for instance. Their warm orange and red tones have a throwback vibe to them, but the design itself is very trendy.
It uses gradient scales to blend the colors. On that note, you can use generational marketing to segment your target audience. It’s important to make sure you understand who you’re trying to target with your website color schemes. This goes far beyond just picking pink designs for women and blue designs for men.
Spotify chose these colors because they knew some of their audience included those who grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. They also know there’s a trendiness to these colors that younger generations love. The contrast of neon blue and primary yellow feels extreme: it goes beyond demanding to be noticed, it makes my eyes physically water. Yet, somehow I’m not opposed to it.
5. Clever Plus Eco-Friendly — Organic Hemp
When choosing website color schemes for organic hemp brands, is there really any other choice than green?! Aside from eco-friendliness, it’s synonymous with weed, hemp, and CBD products. The pale shades of yellow and oatmeal compliment the hemp green, whilst the serious nature of navy blue brings a level of trust to this color scheme.
Equally important, it’d be easy to get bogged down in the predictably earthy tones of browns and greens when visualizing an eco-friendly brand identity. But, what you mustn’t forget is to keep your target audience constantly in your peripheral vision! For example, Daye largely targets young, professional, intelligent, and health-conscious women.
The innovative brand has consequently chosen a bright palette of peach, orange, and green tones. Something that feels so current it wouldn’t look out of place on an artsy Instagram account. In particular, so as to convey their contemporary values of sustainability and natural products.
The idea of a botanical workshop company called “Rock Paper Plant” is so much fun in itself as well. Surely, there is nothing better than using their chosen child-like secondary colors. At first glance, the website color schemes bring in so much joy and excitement. And, as a result, it takes you right back to school days — just as any other creative workshop station would.
How To Choose The Right Website Color Schemes
Ok, so we seem to enjoy attributing emotional and human traits to colors. Brands use these abstract associations to establish emotional connections with people, which helps them gain and retain more consumers or clients. When you’re choosing your website color palette you can use these associations to your advantage.
Of course, your brand is much more than the color scheme you choose. The way those colors interact with your overall website ultimately impacts your conversions, credibility, and the success of your brand. So, whether it’s a new sofa, lipstick, or bicycle, choosing the right color can prove pretty tricky. If it’s for a website you’re trying to launch, things become more complex.
You have to assess the psychological and cultural implications of different website color palettes and how that will affect your brand perception. Thankfully, you don’t need a degree to do this. Research color theory, and the site color choices of your competitors, and don’t be afraid to experiment with boundaries. When done successfully this can bring in very good results.
It can be the difference between choosing between your brand and the rest of the market. When you think about it, the magic thing about colors is that we are literally surrounded by them. And, the inspiring part starts when you open your eyes and look around. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the basic psychological principles of all key colors for your design projects.
Segment One:
- Red: speed, energy, and passion. Red’s a great color to use when you want your audience to take action. Red is often used for ecommerce website color schemes as well as restaurants and takeaway apps—when you’re hungry and ordering a takeaway, you passionately want your food fast!
- Orange: optimism and happiness. Orange is universally seen as a “fun” color and using it in your web design is a great way to show you don’t take yourself too seriously.
- Yellow: warmth, an inviting feeling, positivity. The color of sunshine, yellow is associated with happiness and joy. Super cheerful and accessible. This is a great website color to use for service industries—you’re happy to help!
- Green: Calming and natural, green is the perfect choice for a color scheme when designing a healthy brand. Green is also a great color choice to convey eco-friendliness and sustainability.
- Blue: the most versatile and universally liked. Blue has been shown to inspire feelings of trust, making it a heavy favorite in website color schemes.
Segment Two:
- Purple: creativity, wisdom, and confidence. Purple is a unique, strong color to use within a website color scheme as it demands attention and stands out.
- Pink: creativity and exuberance. Pink is having the time of its life at the minute, more than ever it’s being embraced by people of all genders and identities, meaning brands are following suit and incorporating it into a range of industries.
- Brown: wholesomeness, warmth, and honesty. When used in web design, brown is a comforting color. It gives websites a natural, down-to-earth vibe and often goes hand in hand with traditional, vintage-inspired designs.
- Black: modernity, sleek, neutral. Its minimalism is great for luxury websites; many cosmetic brands adopt black as their key color to signify that their product is quality, which possibly helps you justify spending so much..?
- White: minimalism, transparency. Sometimes the best color choice for minimal web design is no color at all. White is a neutral shade, which means it can easily be combined with other colors for branding purposes. It is primarily used as an accent or background color.
- Gray: maturity, authority. If you’ve got a more serious website, gray is a great color choice, it shows people you mean business.
In nutshell, sticking to the right color palette is so important to the success of your site, and ultimately your business. But, there are more than 10 million colors to choose from. That’s overwhelming, to say the least. How can you determine which website colors are the best for your brand? Whether you have a new site design from scratch or an old website redo?
Learn More: 6 Tips To Choose A Stunning Website Color Scheme
An old website that needs just a simple touch for a facelift? Well, luckily, you’ve come to the right place. For one thing, this guide will show you which color palettes are trending. So that you can find the colors that best fit your website’s brand. As well as those that match how you want your customers to feel.
And now that you have all the dos and don’ts of Website Color Schemes, it’s time you get started. That said, do you need Professional Website Designers to handle your work to perfection? Well, get all the professional help you need with designing your website or blog today. You can either Contact Us or even call us (+254 724 944 456) to get a free quote at any time.
Summary Notes:
All that’s left is to go and do it! Best of all, you already have got all the toolkits you’ll need above in order to create awesome, engaging website color schemes for your business. Always remember, that it may take some trial and error here and there, yes. But, that’s part of the process, right? Any good website color schemes will go through their fair share of iterations.
One more thing — this knowledge will come in handy down the road. These design principles have many more applications than just website design. Such as optimizing things like social media posts and infographics. But for now, start with your website. Take the information you’ve learned from this guide and go crush it! You’re ready to make your site the best it can be.
Finally, if think that there’s something else worth mentioning, you can always Consult Us and let us know. Likewise, feel free to share your additional thoughts, opinions, suggestions, or even contribution questions (for FAQ Answers) in our comments section. Also, don’t forget to share this article with other readers like you that might find it interestingly informative.
