Web Design Considerations: Choosing a Color Scheme

02.25.2008 | When it comes to designing your website, there are a number of different things to keep in mind. In addition to the layout, content, and easy navigation bars, you will almost certainly want to choose the right color scheme. After all, people will notice your color scheme before they notice anything else about the website. If you have a good one, they will be more likely to come back.

As a web designer, there is no reason for you to struggle with choosing a color. After all, you have tons of colors available that be modified to suit your needs. You can mix and match colors to get the perfect hue, all by knowing the correct hexadecimal code for the color. That adds a measure of flexibility to your design that you should certainly take advantage of.

With so many different colors out there, you have to be very careful not to go overboard, though. Some people get too crazy with their color picks, which can ultimately lead to their site looking like a circus. If you use too many colors, you can risk making your page unreadable and highly unprofessional.

One thing that many designers struggle with is choosing color schemes that compliment each other. If you have a website that features a lot of text, then you must make sure to have a stark contrast between your background color and the color of your text. Because people’s eyes are trained to read black text on a white background, you might want to keep this in mind when designing a web page. This light to dark contrast is easy on the eyes and can encourage people to come back.

You must also know that color can ultimately influence a person’s emotions and thus, impact their actions. The color red is often used by restaurants because it makes people hungry. Therefore, if you’re running a diet website, you might not want to choose a red background.

Other colors promote relaxation and just scream, “cool”. Blue and green are colors that have this effect on people.

Always keep in mind which mood you are looking to portray with your colors. This will help create a universal theme to go along with the content on the website. That will help the site develop an identity with which the visitors can ultimately identify.

Choosing a color scheme isn’t rocket science, but it does require a little bit of common sense. Try out different colors until you get the scheme that is easy on your eyes. Eventually, you will get the hang of it and find a suitable combination.