When choosing the color scheme for your website, it’s important to know a little bit about color psychology. Because these colors will represent your brand, it’s less about what your personal favorite colors are and more about what you want these colors to say about you, your book, or your business.
Luckily, there are endless colors to choose from when you factor in shade, tint, and saturation when choosing your hues. And you can use your colors in combination to create the overall effect you’re going for. In other words, you’re bound to find something that you love that will also represent your brand.
Your Brand Color Scheme and Website Color Scheme are One in the Same
Remember, when choosing the color scheme for your website, you are choosing your brand colors. You can use these colors in your logos, your marketing materials, your banners on social media, and other places you show yourself to the world. It’s important that these are all cohesive and consistent. Your website is your most powerful marketing tool, and it represents you and your brand.
What Do You Want to Say with the Color Scheme You Choose for Your Website?
Here at Monkey C Media, we work with authors of all types, from children’s book authors to memoirists and business book authors, and everything in between. Each genre, and each unique brand speaks to a specific audience and reflects a different message and tone.
You will want to send the appropriate message when choosing the color scheme for your website, and to do so, you’ll need to understand a bit about the messages colors can send to your audience. But don’t worry, we explain that, and offer a whole host of options in our design process. Although it’s always good to be informed so you have a solid starting point.
When Choosing the Color Scheme for Your Website, Understanding Color Theory Helps
Colors evoke emotions. They also set a tone and silently speak a message.
You probably already have a sense of this, and inherently understand how color can have an effect on your perceptions. But here’s a basic overview of the most common messages that colors send.
Yellow: Yellow signals happiness grabs attention like orange and red. It can be a great accent color but overuse is discouraged.
Red: Strength, passion and confidence. It can also signal anger and it grabs attention. It sends a strong message either way.
Blue: Calming, professional, neutral. Also trustworthy and friendly, but can evoke a sense of melancholy, depending on usage.
Green: Depending on the shade, green is relaxing or refreshing and energizing. It can signify money, nature and growth.
Purple: It evokes mystery, royalty and luxury but also trustworthiness and femininity. It can also be playful or silly.
Orange: A mix of eye-catching red and yellow, orange can signify happiness, youth and energy.
Pink: Associated with femininity, it evokes passion and youth. Depending on the shade it can be playful or calming.
Black: Black is a color of power and strength. It is sophisticated, classic and serious. It’s minimalist but can be overwhelming.
White: White is also minimalist, but signifies purity and cleanliness. It’s a great for contrast and creating neutral space too.
Gray: It’s great for balancing and neutralizing. It’s neutral and classic but can also appear dreary when overused.
Brown: Organic and earthy. It can represent solidity and steadiness. It’s also makes a great accent to many other colors.
Of course, everyone has colors they prefer and colors they just don’t like. And we like to think this tells us something about that individual’s personality. But color is about more than personal preference. Color is also somewhat subjective and how we perceive it depends on our culture, our age and even our gender. But much of what color represents is also universal.
A Brief Overview of Colors Schemes and How They Work
You probably already know that there are three primary colors. These are red, blue, and yellow. All other colors can be made with these three colors as the base. Secondary colors are made of combinations of the primary colors, and tertiary colors are made from mixing secondary and primary colors. For example, secondary colors are violet orange and green. Tertiary colors offer more variation, and some examples are yellow-orange, blue-violet, and red violet. Then black and white are used to effect the shade and tint. So you can see how there are endless options available when choosing the color scheme for your website.
There are Combination Options Available When Choosing the Color Scheme for Your Website
The great thing about choosing a color scheme for your website is how many options you have available. It should be noted that you want a color scheme that works together. But there are many ways to make this happen!
Monochromatic Color Schemes:
These types of color schemes use the same base hue, such as red, in varying shades and tints to create your color scheme or palette.
Complementary and Compound Color Schemes:
These both use complementary colors offering contrast, yet harmony. These are usually opposite colors on the color wheel. The Compound color scheme is similar but uses less contrast by choosing a base color and then a color on either side of the complementary color.
Triadic and Analogous Color Schemes:
Analogous color schemes use colors that are closely related to each other without being monochrome. Like blue and green. Triadic color schemes choose colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel, and form a triangle shape. For instance red, blue and yellow. Though this color scheme is not limited to those primary colors.
Which color scheme you use will depend on what you want to say with it. A monochromatic color scheme will represent simplicity and harmony, whereas a compound or complementary color scheme will be more bold, eye-catching and complex.
How Many Colors and What Combination: Your Color Palette
Even though there is an endless combination of colors available when choosing the color scheme for your website, it doesn’t mean you can go too crazy with your options. You still want to stick to three to five colors. We use five colors often, but they are harmonious and we usually create multi page websites. We like color! But we also know when and where to use it.
You can get into trouble when the colors aren’t harmonious or they are overused.
It should also be noted that backgrounds are generally white, or a variation of it, in order to not overwhelm the eyes and for readability. We also have to mention that your body text colors should always be a shade of black( unless, of course, you have a black background). It can be tempting to use color in the body text but it makes it look messy, unprofessional and it’s hard to read.
Why Choosing the Right Color Scheme for Your Website is Important
Choosing the color scheme for your website and getting it right is important because, as we noted above, these will be the colors of your brand. This is why we’re very thorough in the consulting portion and creation of a style sheet before we ever begin the design process. We like to get it just right.
But it’s even bigger than creating your brand. Did you know that 42% of online shoppers base their opinions of a product, service or business on the website design alone? This is why your site should be aesthetically pleasing as well as functional and user-friendly.
And get this, 52% of visitors don’t return to a website simply because they didn’t like the aesthetics of the site!
As for color, guess the percentage of people who said they were drawn to, and purchased, a product because of the color alone? 85%! Yes. Eighty-five. So color really does have an impact.
Here are Some Examples of How Color Can Be Used on Various Types of Websites
Children’s Book Author: LaurieTrumbleDavis.com
Venture Capitalist: FredHaney.com
Poet: WiseWordWind.com
Thriller Author: LucyKirkAuthor.com
Ultimately, it’s totally possible to end up with colors you’re pleased with that still fit your brand, and leave you with a polished and professional-looking website. When choosing a color scheme for your website, whether you attempt it yourself, or hire experts to build your website, understanding color theory and how it relates to your brand and your message will give you a leg up.
Along with color, font choice also affects the message your brand is sending. You can read more about font choice here.
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