Color is important in life. People spend time designing their indoor and outdoor living spaces using color palettes that appeal to them. You choose clothing, shoes, and accessories to match the season of the year or the mood you want to convey. That’s why it’s important to spend a great deal of time thinking about the colors you should use for your website. Beyond the basic ideas about emotion and colors, there are several principles to follow. Here are five of the essential tips to use when designing your own website.
Understand Color Theory
Before making any big decisions, take some time to research the principles behind color theory. Understand the emotions behind certain colors and the feeling people get when looking at specific combinations of colors. Learn about the psychology of color and cultural background facts related to different shades. Decide what kind of feeling you want your website to convey to potential visitors, and choose complementary color shades related to those emotions.
Narrow Your Focus
Once you have a primary set of shades to work with, choose a few complementary colors and limit your site’s design to those hues. Having too much color can be overwhelming to your site’s visitors and may appear too busy or cluttered. Instead, make purposeful choices about how you’re going to use each color within your design. Create a look that maintains the proper balance of contrast and emphasis with the light and dark shades of your chosen palette.
Use White Space
While having color and graphics create lots of visual appeal on your site, you must also use plenty of white space for the optimal user experience. You have to maintain the perfect balance of content, design, and white space for your site to be most effective. Too much white space could make your page appear boring or bland, and too little white space can give your site a tacky or silly appearance. The right amount can help you give more elegance and sophistication to your brand identity and your company.
Don’t Forget About Pictures
Many website operators choose a detailed set of colors for their site and then add a set of pictures alongside them. Sometimes these pictures change the look entirely because they have a completely different set of hues within them. Instead of being surprised at your photograph’s impact on your design, work with your pictures before choosing colors. You can make your own website look better with optimal colors and pictures through web.com and its vast amount of resources.
Complement Your Brand
Finally, don’t start working on your website’s look without considering existing brand imagery for your company, like logos, business cards, and other graphic design work. Ideally, you want everything to complement each other seamlessly. Choose colors that are already part of your brand’s identity so you’re not reinventing your entire corporate image.
Understanding ideas about color and design can greatly help you when you work on your website’s look. Make informed decisions about the variations in shading and hues you want to have featured on your site to make for a more effective functionality and user-friendly experience.
