How to Strategically Use Colors in Your Website Design: an Ultimate Guide

What is one of the most essential aspects of how we perceive the world? Surely it must be color. But careful selection of colors for your website isn't only a matter of aesthetics. Colors can create associations, convey meanings, and just set the overall mode. That's why when it comes to the usage of colors on the web, the power colors can have on the success of your website shouldn't be underestimated.

Sources claim that color enhances brand recognition by almost 80%! This, in turn, improves confidence in your brand, which is especially important if you are planning to build online stores. Through the right selection of colors, you can add a unique charm to your website while simultaneously improving user experience, appealing to their senses.

To help you achieve this, we've put together a guide dedicated to color usage on the web. We'll take a look at what color theory, types of colors, and color palettes. While none of these rules are dogmatic, knowing some of the main principles of how colors work on the web is a good place to start if you are looking to create impactful and effective websites for your clients.

1. Understanding Color Theory

Color theory is a set of fundamental principles that govern how to create harmonious color combinations, as well as logical structures between colors. Understanding these principles is an important first step in ensuring that you are creating effective color palettes for your brand and websites.

The Color Wheel

A great way to understand the fundamentals of color theory is through studying the color wheel. Now, even if you are as far as design as possible, there’s still a large chance you’ve seen a color wheel in one form or another.

So, what is it exactly? Created in the 17th century by none other than Sir Isaac Newton, color wheel is the color spectrum mapped into a circle. You can think of it as a geometrical representation of colors, with hues arranged according to their wavelength, emphasizing the relationship between primary, secondary, and tertiary colors.

Fast forward to today, the color wheel has waived its way into the life of artists, developers, and designers, and helps them to find harmonious and beautiful color combinations for their creations. It’s a versatile tool with many variations of understanding which might take some time. To make it simpler, for the purpose of this article, we’ll take a look at primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, as well as tints, shades, and tones.

Primary Colors

There are three primary colors in the color wheel: red, yellow, and blue. You can then combine the primary colors together to form secondary colors.

Secondary Colors

On the color wheel, there are also three secondary colors. These colors are purple (red + blue), green (blue + yellow), and orange (red + yellow). By combining secondary colors with primary colors, we get the tertiary colors.

Tertiary colors

As mentioned, the tertiary colors on the color wheel are a result of combining the primary and secondary colors (i.e. yellow-orange, blue-green, and more).

Tints, Shades, and Tones

Primary, secondary, and tertiary colors are considered as pure colors, known also as hues. They stand out as bright, vivid, and cheerful. And they also are the base of tints, shades, and tones.

Tints — Tints are the combination of pure colors with white, resulting in lighter colors.
Shades — Shades are created when adding black to pure colors, creating darker versions of hunes.
Tones — Tones are the mixture of hues with gray (black+white), offering a more subdued version of pure colors.

2. Taking Into Consideration the Cultural Context

Although different colors have different meanings and associations for each of us, many of them also have a deep-rooted cultural significance. For example, the color red in Western society represents danger, among other things. You've also probably seen this online, in case of, for example, "Cancel" buttons or other types of errors. In Eastern societies, however, red represents luck and isn't used in the context of danger. In Malaysia, for example, green is used as the color to indicate dangerous situations. A little bit further, in Japan, green is the color indicating love.

All this to say that when choosing colors for your website, keep in mind that context is critical. Depending on the countries that you are targeting, and the content of your message, the colors you use can be interpreted differently, sending out a message different from the one you intended.

Luckily, this is not so hard: a simple Google search and a little bit of reading about the cultural background of your target market should do the trick. And if you are going global, or intend to cover significant territories, avoid using colors with cultural significance altogether. The meanings we give to colors are deeply ingrained and can create positive or negative connotations, even without people realizing it.

There are certain exceptions, of course. Big brands are often so associated with their colors, that this brand perception overshadows any potential negative feelings that may arise.

Creating a Color Palette

Now that you have a better understanding of color theory, let's take a look at how you can create an intentional color palette for your website.

The color you choose first should be the primary color of your brand, not to be confused with the primary colors on the color wheel. The primary color is also used to describe the main color of each palette, and it doesn't need to be red, yellow, or blue.

Now, this is where knowing color psychology and understanding what effect colors have on people comes in handy. What do you want your visitors to feel when they land on your website? What should be their perception, and what actions should they take? You can use the below associations as a reference guide when making your color palette.

Color Palette Types

There are five main types of color palettes: analogous, monochromatic, triad, and complementary. Any of these can be used to create an effective color palette for a website. Below we'll look at some examples of how each of these color palette types are used in website design.

Analogous

Analogous colors are colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. This type of palette can look very beautiful because the colors fit together so nicely. However, the effect could be too subtle, preventing any elements from standing out enough.

Monochromatic

Monochromatic color palettes are based on a single color paired with various shades and tints. Like analogous palettes, monochromatic palettes can be very pleasing to look at. However, it's a good idea to add a complementary color to a monochromatic palette in web design in order to draw attention to important elements.

Here’s an example of a monochrome website, where black and are dominating. The background adds texture and depth to the website, while the colors draw our attention to what’s important.

Triad

Triad color palettes consist of three colors that are evenly spaced apart on the color wheel, forming a triangle. This type of color palette is a bit risky to use in website design because it can appear noisy. However, depending on context, triad color palettes can be very effective for youthful, playful, and/or artistic brands.

Here’s an example of a bold usage of triad color palette. Through a combination of web design elements and visuals, it’s attention grabbing and bold, but not too over the top, emphasizing what’s important.

Complementary

Complementary color palettes contain colors on opposite ends of the color wheel. These palettes are very effective for web design because they create visual balance and tension. If the colors are used equally however, the tension can be too high. Instead, choose one of the complementary colors as the primary brand color, and use the other as an accent color.

Using Color Palettes in Your Website Design

There are many tools online that you can use to aid the process of creating color palettes on your website. Adobe Color is one of the more popular and versatile ones. You can use it to play around with the color wheel, experimenting with different color combinations and all five palette types discussed above. And if you need a little bit of inspiration, you can use the Explore option to browse through thousands of available palettes.

When creating a color palette for your website design, a good rule is to start with choosing three colors: a primary color, a secondary color, and an accent color. Once you found the perfect color combination, apply it to your website design using the 60/30/10 rule, where 60% of the time the primary color is used, while the second is used 30%, and the accent color 10% of the time. Adding more may distract visitors from the main actions you want them to take.

Wrapping Up

In this article, we covered the basics of color theory and how you can use them to create high-value and impactful websites. While color is a tricky tool to master, it's also an inseparable part of a highly functioning website. We hope that the tips and rules discussed above will help set a good foundation as you start the process of your website design. Good luck!