Why are website color schemes so important?

Everything, every little detail that is a part of your website design is important and impacts the user experience in some way. One of the things that easily gets overlooked is the color scheme because people often underestimate it.

Choosing the right website color schemes might not seem like much, but it can get you a long way. Cool color schemes will make the user feel more welcome and comfortable on your website while enhancing the overall user experience.

For Amelia, we chose the calm and neutral blue color scheme with bright accents. Later, you will find out why.

The Importance of Color Schemes

The best color palette is the one that will help you:

Occupy the user’s attention;

Engage your target audience;

Turn visitors into customers;

Spread the good word of mouth;

Make the visitors interested in your brand

In today’s competitive market, there are many businesses out there and the key is to stand out from the pack in some way if you want to turn the visitors into customers. With that in mind, one has to know that all elements on the website affect the visitor’s final decision. If you want to help them cross the line between visitors and customers, you have to think about everything.

Color Themes in Website Design

Determine the Product / Service You Are Selling

If always comes down to the product or service that you are selling and you have to choose beautiful colors that pair well with the product.

For instance, if you are selling environmental products, the logical way to go would be by choosing a green color palette rather than, for example, a red color palette. The color palette ideas have to be inspired by the product or service.

Know your Target Audience

Good color schemes are the color schemes that your target audience wants to see. A modern color palette will do great with a younger audience while the more neutral color palette might be better for the older generations.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a bright color palette full of vibrant colors can cause eye fatigue and drive visitors away.

Choosing a Background Color

When choosing color schemes for websites, keep in mind that the background color’s purpose is to punch the body of the page forward and keep the focus on the content.

Make Your Text Black

Reading black text is easy on the eye and it is something people are used to seeing. You can get a little creative and play around that, but there is no need to stray too much from what we all know that works.

What Does Each Color Tell Us?

Different colors have different meanings are we are used to seeing them in specific contexts. Here are some of the most popular colors and the stories behind them:

Red is a color that invokes a strong emotion. It is a powerful color often used with a call to action elements such as “Buy now”, “Reserve now”, and similar. It is easily noticeable but it should be used cautiously because it can be a little overwhelming.

is a color that invokes a strong emotion. It is a powerful color often used with a call to action elements such as “Buy now”, “Reserve now”, and similar. It is easily noticeable but it should be used cautiously because it can be a little overwhelming. Orange is often used in websites that promote or sell food products. It is a warm color palette associated with increasing creativity and positive thinking, and it is particularly popular among the younger generation.

is often used in websites that promote or sell food products. It is a warm color palette associated with increasing creativity and positive thinking, and it is particularly popular among the younger generation. Yellow is often a part of modern color schemes and while it can be incorporated into almost any website, it is particularly appealing to children. However, keep in mind that it shouldn’t be the dominant color as it can get exhausting for the eyes. Instead, it should be used as an accent color to highlight certain elements and to add some personality to the website design.

is often a part of modern color schemes and while it can be incorporated into almost any website, it is particularly appealing to children. However, keep in mind that it shouldn’t be the dominant color as it can get exhausting for the eyes. Instead, it should be used as an accent color to highlight certain elements and to add some personality to the website design. Green is often associated with nature, tourism, environmental “green” products etc. But the story of the color green goes beyond that. Green is often a part of the best color schemes because it is pleasing to the human eye, it symbolizes wealth and prosperity, and it is one of the most trendy colors.

is often associated with nature, tourism, environmental “green” products etc. But the story of the color green goes beyond that. Green is often a part of the best color schemes because it is pleasing to the human eye, it symbolizes wealth and prosperity, and it is one of the most trendy colors. Blue is a conservative color known to relax the nervous system while it also invokes trust. It can be easily incorporated on almost any website. One thing to keep in mind though is that is shouldn’t be used for text as it is not the standard color for the human eye to read with.

is a conservative color known to relax the nervous system while it also invokes trust. It can be easily incorporated on almost any website. One thing to keep in mind though is that is shouldn’t be used for text as it is not the standard color for the human eye to read with. Black is one of the most useful colors in website design, especially when it comes to text. It is also associated with art and photography.

is one of the most useful colors in website design, especially when it comes to text. It is also associated with art and photography. Purple is used in religious sites and vacation sites.

Capture a Feeling with the Right Website Color Schemes

Website Color Palettes that Excite an Audience

Triggering an emotional response with the audience can lead to many things – one of which is completing the purchase. The best example of how this works is the way children’s brands use color schemes to excite their target audience. Long story short, if you can get the potential customer excited about your product or service, there is a much better chance you will sell it.

To create excitement, modern colors, and bright shades are often used as a part of website color schemes. For example, red color schemes are more likely to trigger an emotional response than a simple grey color palette. Keep that in mind when choosing the cool color palettes for your site.

Website Color Schemes that Increase Brand Sentiment

We talked before about keeping the target audience in mind when choosing the best colors for websites. However, there are some colors that can be easily incorporated into any website as they are universally liked across the board.

Green color schemes, teal color schemes, light blue color palette, and navy blue color palette are some of the examples of colors that are appealing to all generations and audiences.

Website Color Schemes that Add Credibility

If your goal is to create a more professional, business website, you should stay away from colors that are too bright and vibrant. Using a color palette that adds credibility is a better option in cases like that.

Think about using vintage colors as a part of the retro color palette, a soft color palette with gentle tones, or an earth tone color palette as a part of a warm color scheme.

If you are going with the dark color palette, make sure to add a soft touch with a lighter color to make the website seem less cold and to add some personality.

Website Color Schemes that Increase Trust

While there are many great color combinations that are appropriate to use, if your first goal is to be viewed as a trustworthy and stable brand, use the color blue.

Blue, as a part of a website color scheme, is known to increase the feelings of trust. It is no coincidence that around 53% of corporate brands in America use blue as a part of their logo.

Think about Your Industry

There are many professional color schemes that you can use but always keep in mind your industry and the colors associated with it.

Green for eco-friendly brands

This one might seem obvious, but we have to mention it anyway. If you are developing an eco-friendly brand, there is no better color for you to use than a green color scheme.

Blue for water

Even though water isn’t technically blue, everybody’s first association when it comes to the ocean is the color blue. If your brand has anything to do with water, use different tones of blue to create that wave effect that everyone is expecting to see.

Blue for Finance

When it comes to finances, you want your brand to be viewed as stable and trustworthy – which is why you should use the color blue as explained earlier.

Red for retail

The red color scheme is very popular among retailers; 59% of retailers have red in their logo. The reason behind it is the fact that this color easily generates excitement and makes the customers want to complete the purchase.

Great Examples of the Website Color Schemes

BAUNFIRE is a top digital web design agency in San Jose, California. Their creative team of web designers, interactive developers, and marketing strategists provide branding, graphic design, and corporate website services for leading technology companies, brands, and startups.

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Entrepreneurs, business owners, non-profit leaders. They all love to innovate and challenge the status quo.

Identifying that unique and individual spark that illuminates the beauty of each and every woman. This is the key to our creativity at Mistretta Coiffure, a refined and exclusive ‘trend laboratory’ where shapes and colours blend to create a unique and personal esthetic experience.

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BarkBox is a great example of a site using a cute color palette that makes the visitors feel welcome and comfortable. The soothing shades of pink are repeated throughout the page as the contrast beautifully with the shades of blue used both in the website design as well as in the brand’s logo.

Red is the best choice when it comes to choosing the color for your call to action elements. It naturally triggers excitement and it compels the visitors to make a purchase. You will often find it as a part of retail websites, especially when it comes to the elements that are supposed to draw the visitor’s attention immediately.

Nordic Ruby, a conference in Stockholm, uses a beautiful blue and orange color scheme that adds a certain elegance and sophistication to the overall design.

LemonStand

If there is a website that could benefit from using yellow color schemes, it is a website called LemonStand. However, they managed to incorporate this vibrant color into the palette beautifully, without making it too overwhelming and disruptive. Unfortunately, LemonStand has shut down as of June 5th, 2019. by following this link you can learn more about LemonStand alternatives that might be a good fit for you.

Since Mint is a website dedicated to finance, it is no surprise that we can see lots of blues and greens here. However, by adding soft touches of brown into the mix, they created a lovely earthy color palette that is both soothing and conveys trust.

Odopod decided to go with simple color templates but they added a dose of personality by incorporating gradient on the homepage, as well as large typography.

One of the good practices in website design is reserving a specific color for CTAs – and not using them anywhere else on the website. Fiverr did it too and in their case, it is the color green that appears only on the call to action elements.

Ahrefs created what could be called a liberal color palette that is creative and interesting, yet still easy to look at.

Millo.co uses their website color palette to make you look exactly where you are supposed to. It is a simple color palette and the design is very intuitive.

Best color palettes are often the palettes that put the visitor at ease. Loom did it beautifully by using baby blue combined with a touch of salmon. It also uses different color blues for CTAs which makes the design even more interesting and intuitive.

Online Color Palette Generators

Coolors is a super fast color generator that is free of charge and that will definitely get the job done. The key features include:

Fast and simple – it takes nothing more but pressing a spacebar to create beautiful colour schemes that work together perfectly

Export and share – export your schemes in multiple handy formats like PNG, PDF, SCSS, SVG, or copy the permanent URLs

Image to colors – pick up starting colors from your images and get the perfect combination automatically

Palettes collection – create your profile and keep all your color schemes well organized with name and tags

Adjust and refine – customize your colors precisely by adjusting temperature, hue, saturation, brightness etc.

Colors in the cloud – login to your account and access your creations everywhere

Mudcube is a palette generator that takes the color wheel to 3D where you can rotate a sphere around to get the perfect colors. It comes with 10 harmony presets, 9 vision presets, and 3 quantize presets. It also has a selection of themes from a drop-down menu to choose from if you don’t feel like creating one from the scratch. You can download your palettes in .AI or .ACO files

Color by dixon & me is ideal for those who don’t feel like spending too much time playing around with the color wheel and adjusting the colors to perfection manually. This tool lets you select the color of your choice from selector while the app does the rest for you.

You can experiment with different harmonies such as full HEX, HSL, and RGB info. These values CMYK, RGB, etc. will help you to find a particular color from swatch and when you click the swatch. it will be added in your palette.

SpyColor.com is a very useful color information and color conversion tool. All you have to do is type whatever comes to mind and the search results will suggest you the best results.

You can type in a color name, for example, Amaranth Purple and you will get a beautiful selection of purple color schemes for you to choose from.

ColorZilla is a wonderful advanced tool for creating an amazing CSS color palette. The advanced features include:

Eyedropper – get the color of any pixel on the page

Advanced Color Picker (similar to Photoshop’s)

Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator

Webpage Color Analyzer – get a color palette for any site

Palette Viewer with 7 pre-installed palettes

Color History of recently picked colors

Colormind is a unique tool that uses color styles from films, art, and photos in order to create a color palette. If no colors are locked, it creates random website color schemes. If, on the other hand, you have a particular starting color in mind, all you have to do is lock that color and let the generator do the rest of the job.

ColorHexa is a great tool for designers that allows you to put a color value into the search bar and it will then display the information related to color schemes, alternatives, tints, tones etc.

Palettable is an amazing color combination generator that creates a palette using the knowledge of thousands of designers. It has a full screen display that helps you better see how the colors of your choice complement each other. In addition to that, it offers you suggestions for various colors that can be customized to your liking.

Canvas colors is an amazing color information tool that will let you know everything from the meaning of the colors of your choice to the best color combinations. It comes with hundreds of pre-made color combinations that include the descriptions of each color and the colors it pairs well with.

When you open Colordot, your entire screen will be colored in a color of your choice that you can easily adjust or change simply by moving your cursor. Once you find the color you like best, you can save it simply by clicking on it. This tool also comes in the form of an iPhone app.

In Material Palette, you have to pick any two colors from the given tiles and the app will then create a color palette for you. These website color schemes can be easily downloaded or tweeted.

COLOURlovers is a creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes, patterns, and discuss the latest trends in the world of colors. You can easily join the community and share your own designs and enjoy all the other user-generated content. The membership is free and everything here is done in the spirit of love.

Pictaculous is a color palette generator courtesy of MailChimp that lets you generate a color palette from PNG, JPG or GIF image or photo. Basically, all it takes is to upload a picture of your choice and let the app do the rest. Then, the app creates an Adobe swatch file for you to help you download the color palette quickly and easily.

Colorexplorer was created by Kim Jensen as a fun little side project and it turned out to be quite useful and popular. It is all about exploring colors and different combinations to create the most unique and beautiful website color schemes.

It comes with a variety of useful tools such as those for uploading CSS and HTML files, evaluating and working with colors from an existing website, matching tools with a large number of matching algorithms, advanced picker tool, color conversion tools, and many more.

Colors on the Web – The Color Wizard is a color matching application for anyone who wants to create new designs with beautiful website color schemes. All you have to do is enter the hex value of your color or select a color from the drop-down and the app will then process it and return a range of matching colors.

This tool also comes with a unique tool called the Contrast Analyzer that lets you know whether two colors meet the accessibility guidelines defined by the W3 consortium.

Color Combos is all about creating the perfect color combinations for your new website color schemes. It was designed specifically for web developers to help them quickly pick and test various color combinations and palettes. This tool includes the combo library, combo tester, combo maker and font color tester.

COPASO by COLOURlovers is an advanced tool that will help you create the desired website color schemes quickly and easily. However, keep in mind that you have to be logged in in order to save the palette of your choice. This tool comes with many options for creating color palettes in the form of preset triadic, tetradic, complementary, and split-complementary colors.

Working with Color Blender includes several simple steps:

Pick a color value format, input two valid CSS color values in the format you chose, and pick the number of midpoints you’d like to see. The palette will show the colors you input as well as the requested number of midpoint colors, and the values of those colors.

Clicking on a square in the “waterfall” display will fill in the appropriate value for whichever input is highlighted.

Switching between value formats will translate whatever values are in place.

“Clear” removes all values and colors, but does not change the current value format.

The URL of the page is updated with each change so you can share or bookmark the colors, blend steps, and value format currently shown.

If you’d like to have the Color Blender for offline use, just view source and save to your hard drive.

Colllor is a useful generator for creating nice-looking website color schemes and pretty color palettes with just a few simple clicks. A feature that stands out is the tool that helps you find the exact value of the darker shades of any color which is very useful for creating a professional color palette for website.

Flat UI Colors comes with 14 color palettes and 280 colors that you can use for your newest designs and projects. All you have to do is copy/paste the hex code right into CSS Stylesheet or into Photoshop. Once you do that, this tool will give you a handful of existing flat color palettes.

Giovanni Scala created Check my Colours with one simple idea in mind – to see the foreground and background color blend of all DOM elements and to decide if they provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone suffering from color deficiency.

Colr.org is a great tool for creative professionals who enjoy playing around with their colors and testing all possible combinations. One of the cool features of this tool is that it enables you to see the range of colors available within a picture of your choice.

COLRD is a great tool that not only allows you to create cool color backgrounds, app color schemes, and beautiful color palettes, but it also lets you share your inspiration with the world. This tool shares tons of beautiful patterns, gradients, and images which will help you create the most unique designs.

Another great tool for generating website color schemes – DeGraeve Palette Generator. It is a web-based tool that is not only very useful, but it is also completely free of charge. All you have to do is paste the URL of an online image of your choice and the generator will then create the color palette related to the image in question.

PHOTOCOPA is another great tool by COLOURlovers that will help you create lovely color palettes for websites that are image-inspired. In order to create the best website color schemes with this tool, you will have to upload a photo from the web and then keep in in the gallery as an inspiration for other users.

Colorion is a tool with 3 main options: base colors, gradient buttons, and image to the material palette. It will help you create wonderful color palettes for professional websites in just a few simple steps.

Ending thoughts on website color schemes

Colors are a very important part of every design and their role in the website development is not to be underestimated. Not only will the right website color schemes help you keep the visitors around longer, but they can also influence their actions and turn the visitors into customers.

Choose your color palettes wisely while keeping in mind the industry you work in as well as the target audience. Play around with the color tools and see what which one of website color schemes best fits your design.

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