The basic principles for balanced color use on your website
Choosing the right colors for your website is a tricky task. You start with your favorite color and end up with a messy mix. But it can be simple. In this article, I share my basic principles for balanced color choice. I discuss which colors you need, how to use them, how not to use them, and what the most common pitfalls are.
In addition, I share a simple framework in which I go through each step again. You can apply this framework to your own website and it gives you a clear and practical overview, so that you can immediately start optimizing the use of color on your website.
Let’s discuss the importance of colors on your website. Because there’s more to it than just choosing your favorite color.
Choosing the base color based on color psychology & the color wheel
Choosing a good base color for your new brand – and therefore also for your website – is one of the first and most difficult choices you have to make in the branding process. And with approximately 10 million colors that you can see with the naked eye, this can be quite a task.
To make a first distinction we can divide colors into 3 color categories:
Primary colors
Secondary colors
Tertiary colors
color palette primary, tertiary and secondary
Primary colors: also called the basic colors. These cannot be created by mixing colors with each other. These are the colors red, yellow and blue.
Secondary colours: these are colour combinations that are created by combining 2 primary colours. For example, we can get orange by combining red and yellow.
Tertiary colors: these are colors that we get by combining primary and secondary colors with each other. An example of this is olive green.
Choice based on color psychology
Once you have a clearer idea of how the different colors are divided, you can start choosing the base color of your brand.
Research has shown that colour is an important factor for a brand , with it alone being able to increase brand awareness and recognition by 80% .
Therefore, using color psychology is a good starting north korea email list 815 contact leads point. This will help you fine-tune your choices from the 10 million possibilities. Below you will find 12 colors with their different meanings and the emotions they can evoke.
image with 12 colors and explanation with meaning and what emotions they can evoke
To give an example, we can look at one of the biggest brands, McDonald’s. Red was chosen for its stimulating properties associated with activity and increasing heart rate, which can help stimulate appetite. the impact of color on customer behavior: lessons from bol, starbucks & mcdonald’s Yellow is known for its association with happiness .
Time to make the first choice. You will find that you can alb directory divide your brand into different categories. Make a list of the remaining colors and take the time to work through each category step by step.
Tip 1: Stick to one base color. A color palette like McDonald’s can work great, but often it’s easier to maintain consistency with one base color, like Airbnb.
Tip 2: There is no perfect choice. As mentioned earlier, your brand will fit into different categories and there are multiple good options. Choose what feels best and use consistency and the following tips to build a strong brand.