The Importance of Color Theory in Website Design

Credits: Shirsendu Das

A website symbolizes our business personality. Colour is one of the most powerful tools in website design. It’s a very important decision before designing and developing a website. The right colour combination is easiest way to draw the attention of the audience. If we select the wrong colour, it will convey a negative message to our audience.

UNDERSTANDING COLOURS

\There are 4 primary colours. Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green. Red relates to the body, yellow relates emotions, blue relates to the mind and green relates to the balance between body, mind, and emotions.

• Red: powerful, emergency, life, passion, health, romance, call to action, sale

• Yellow: caution, joy, sunshine, warmth, intensity, happiness

• Blue: trust, peace, serenity, loyalty, sadness

• Green: environmental, nature, finance, health, jealousy, growth

• Orange: impulse, confidence, friendly, safety (construction)

• Purple: royalty, wealth, romantic

• Brown: stability, natural, earth

• Gray: neutral

• White: purity, clean, innocence, neutral

• Black: power, intensity, death, authority, luxury, edginess, sophistication, unknown

HOW TO CHOOSE A COLOUR SCHEME

Understanding the meaning behind colours and choosing a colour scheme is different. Usually, when we decide a colour scheme we’ll begin with the dominant colour. This might come from the existing logo or brochure. Another way to choose dominant colour is to think of the words we would use to describe the company site. What kind of emotional response do we want people to have when looking at our design.

Let’s see an example – IBM logo.

They use blue to associate feelings of trust and stability with their brand.

BACKGROUND COLOUR

\We often find it helpful to have a different background colour. By doing this, it punches the body of the website page forward and keeps the focus on the website itself.

MAKE YOUR TEXT BLACK

\For reading the website’s text, black is the best option. It is the easiest for the eye. There is no need to stray from what people have grown up using.\

A final note – The most impactful websites are the ones that keep the use of colour to a minimum. As a rule, we recommend that in website we have to use maximum 2-3 colours.