7 Most Important Rules for Website Colour Schemes

While designing a website, one of the most important aspects you should plan for is the website colour scheme. As per reports, choosing the right colours in fact could increase your sales by 85%. A well-designed website helps build communication, increases the credibility of a brand, and holds visitors’ attention. The choice of colours that a designer chooses for their website is called a website colour scheme or colour palette. As a designer, you have the power to build a website that can attract visitors the very moment they land on your home page.

Why Colour Scheme is Important for Your Website?

Choosing a website colour scheme should be carefully planned and executed because your website defines what your brand represents. They create emotional connections with your audience. This includes logo designing, menu, the home page, call-to-action buttons, and important elements of your website. It has to be right because if it doesn’t, you could end up with a horrible website that doesn’t make your customer feel comfortable. It can impact the credibility of your brand.

7 Important Rules for Website Colour Schemes:

1. Knowledge of the Colour Wheel: In colour theory, the first and foremost rule is to understand the three groups of the colour wheel. A colour wheel consists of three divisions, i.e., primary colours, secondary colours, and tertiary colours.
   • Three primary colours are Red, Yellow, Blue, from which all the other colours are made. They are also called the colour wheel’s base colours.
   • Secondary colours are Orange, Green, Violet which are formed by the primary colours.
   • There are 6 Tertiary Colours or middle colours, namely, Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Violet, Red-Violet, formed by the combination of a primary and a secondary colour.

   You should be aware of how these colours work on a website before you start a project on your own.

2. Understand Colour Combinations: By now, you understood the divisions of colours, the next thing to keep in mind is the colour combinations. Choosing the right colour combinations helps you spread the brand message clearly to your website visitors. For e.g.: McDonald’s prefers red and yellow colour in its logo which represents optimism or liveliness and happiness. The designer has to decide the type of colour combination that fits best for your website as well as business objective. There are five main colour combinations in the website colour scheme: complementary, analogous, split complementary, triads and tetradic, and monochromatic.
   • On the colour wheel, the complementary colour combination is the mixing of colours that are completely opposite to each other. For e.g.: Red and Green, Blue and Orange, Red and Blue, etc. Using complementary colours can help you get noticed easily in the call to action buttons or important links.
   • Analogous colours sit close to each other on the colour wheel, often used to create a simple, sophisticated design. These colours are extremely similar, for e.g.: red, red-orange, and light-orange.
   • Split complementary colours are made up of three colours, combining a primary colour and two analogous colours to complement the primary colour.
   • Triadic and tetradic colours are the most basic and flexible colour combination types. Triadic colours are made of three colours that are evenly spaced on the colour wheel, combining both analogous and complementary colours. Tetradic colours are comprised of four colours of two pairs of complementary colours, for e.g.: red, green, blue, and orange.
   • Monochromatic colours are variations of one colour. Different shades of one colour can be used by using tints, altering tones, and saturation.
3. Consider Colour Psychology: Colour Psychology is the behavioural study of the association between colour and emotions. In simpler terms, it defines how colours can impact our thoughts and feelings. The association of colours comes from both nature and culture. For e.g.: red implies energy, love, strength whereas white represents peace, simplicity. In cultural reference, in the eastern world, white implies death, mourning, whereas black represents death, darkness in the western world. Thus, while creating your brand’s personality, you got to be conscious about which colour can trigger your potential consumers and which colour cannot.
4. Address Visual Hierarchy: Hierarchy is one of the key things to address in website designing. It depends on the size, perspective, colour, context, typography (font), etc., to make your website stand out. As a designer, it is a huge responsibility to figure out and arrange the content of a website based on its importance. Visual hierarchy helps in navigating the viewer through the design and addresses the message clearly. The colour of the texts, buttons, backgrounds, and everything else needs to showcase the important content and links in order of their importance. Generally, the more important element of a website comes with a dark colour followed by a lighter background. However, the less important elements which don’t necessarily require attention come with a lighter or shady colour.
5. Focus on Call-to-Action Buttons: Colour Scheme is a deciding factor to whether your audience should stick to your website and click the actionable button. On a website, the Call-to-Action buttons are important tools that make it easier for users to complete an action. It should catch your user’s attention easily. The right choice of colours can help these buttons look visible. For e.g.: In a black background, an orange or yellow CTA button would be a powerful choice.
6. Keep Responsive Design in Mind: When designing a website, it is important to acknowledge the rule of a responsive design. The design should be compatible across devices; mobiles phones, laptops, desktops, tablets, etc., across screen sizes, orientations, and platforms. The layout automatically should adjust to the size of the user’s screen. This improves user experience and creates a positive image of your business. The colour palette plays a crucial role in responsive designs. On small screens, you have to depend on fewer colours as compared to the big screen. The less vibrant it is, the more effective it can be. With minimalistic use of colours, you can easily guide your audience on what is important in your website.
7. Use Neutral Colours: Although neutral colours are less popular among designers, they are essential for a well-crafted design. Neutral colours give your audience space to understand and articulate what the website is talking about. Neutral colours are white, black, grey, brown, and beige. They are used to give a finishing look to your website, or information through text.

A good understanding of the website colour scheme is important in designing a website. These rules can help your website stand out from the crowd. Good luck, happy designing!

Meanwhile, if you want us to develop and design your website incorporating all that we spoke of and more, just drop us a line.