Choosing the right colors for your website
is just as important as selecting graphics and content.
This article discusses what factors to consider when
selecting your website colors.
Colors have many effects on people. Certain colors
can invoke specific emotions in people. Emotional
reactions can affect the image of your company in
the visitors mind and can have a major effect or your
company’s “brand”.
If you doubt color evokes emotion, consider the phrases,
“green eyed monster” “seeing red”
or “in a black mood”. The green-eyed monster
is a reference to jealousy, seeing red means a person
is angry and a black mood refers to depression. People
do associate colors with specific moods. Scientific
texts have proven that different colors can make people
happy, sad, relaxed, excited, angry or afraid.
Anything that can evoke those responses in people
needs to be looked at carefully when designing your
website. Colors tend to be classified as “neutral,
“warm” or “cool”. So, let’s
take a look at some of them.
Neutral Colors
Whites – Whites stand for purity and cleanliness.
In eastern cultures white is the color of death while
in western cultures in is the color of marriage and
hope.
Grays – Grays exude reliability and conservatism.
Shades of gray are one of the most popular colors
for business attire.
Browns – Browns stand for the earth, home and
family.
Blacks – Blacks tend to signify power, elegance
and sophistication. In western cultures also stands
for death.
Warm Colors
Reds – Reds are good for attracting attention.
That is why they are frequently used in sales letters
to emphasize specific points. Red symbolizes, anger,
violence, lust, passion and can actually raise people’s
blood pressure.
Yellows – Yellow can mean weakness or cowardice
as well warmth and happiness.
Oranges – Orange is associated with fall harvesting
and Halloween. It can also stimulate a person’s
appetite.
Pinks – Pinks usually symbolize innocence,
femininity and romance.
Cool Colors
Blue – Blue has a calming effect on people.
It exudes intelligence and trust. It is a surprising
that many financial and health care institutions use
blue themes. Blue can also suppress appetite.
Green – While the green stands for jealousy,
greed and inexperience, it also stands for money and
wealth.
Purple – Purple tends to symbolize creativity.
The darker shades were once reserved for royalty and
the lighter shades are usually associated with romance.
Web Safe Colors
Vacuum tubes, LCD and Plasma screens all display
colors differently. There are 216 colors that can
be displayed on every type of monitor in every web
browser and will look almost identical. These 216
are called web safe colors. If consistent color is
important, you should only use web safe colors on
your websites.
Color Schemes
Color schemes can be composed of a single color,
complimentary colors or contrasting colors.
Single Color -- Single color schemes uses several
different shades and intensities of a single color
on a white background. For example, if you want to
use a red color scheme, you can use everything from
the lightest pink to a red so dark it is almost black.
Complementary Colors – Complementary color
schemes use two or more colors that look good together
and create a pleasant blend that is appealing to most
people. One color may be dominant and the other used
to compliment it.
Contrasting Colors – Contrasting color schemes
use two or more dominant colors to create an “eye
grabbing effect”. For example, using a dark
blue page background, a deep red frame around a white
background text area with black text is a typical
contrasting color scheme.
Web designers need to be careful when using contrasting
colors because some combinations tend to “vibrate”
such as red text on a blue background and can hurt
some people’s eyes, while other combinations
are just had to focus on. Other combinations “clash”
and are unpleasant to look at.
General Color Guidelines
The following guidelines are suggestions that should
make your web pages readable for everyone.
