studio1c

Have you ever wondered why there are numerous colors on the websites that you visit? Have you ever though what’s so amazing about the colors? Did you feel like abandoning a site the moment you are on it while at some other sites, you feel at home and love to browse through the web pages? If you are wondering what this is all about, welcome to the secret behind choosing your website colors.

It’s human tendency to be attracted to colors. So, if you want your website to have a steady, daily hit, make sure the colors chosen by you suit your products or services. It’s always wise to seek expert advice before you sit down to design your website.

Before choosing your website colors, keep in mind that whatever your choice, it will invariably affect the psychology of the visitors. Be it the color of the background, text, headlines, etc, you should make a careful choice. If you chose colors at random or based on your personal preferences, your site may end up either being plain and boring or pretty chaotic, where visitors won’t like to stay for long.

There are some well established color associations you may not even realize as a business owner or website visitor. Following are common associations various colors evoke:

• Red: passion, heat, love, power, excitement, warning, impulse, danger, adventure or action
• White: peace, purity, cleanliness, modern, innocence or simplicity.
• Yellow: happiness, joy, light, hope, intellect, and energy
• Blue: trust, calming, stability, loyalty, water, relaxing, power, dignity
• Pink: calming, feminine
• Green: life, growth, money, jealousy, nature, fertility
• Purple: richness, power, love, royalty, sophistication
• Brown: credibility, stability

Though some people often try to go for anti-aesthetic colors as they think that such colors will capture more attention than the colors belonging to an aesthetically-correct list, you should refrain from too much of experimentation. For example, having a white background and yellow text in the foreground may appear to be a good experiment but it will add to the woes of your visitors, who will ultimately abandon your site and move onto greener pastures or websites that have a color combination, which is soothing to the eyes.

Several colors have specific meanings in certain cultures or regions. So, you should be careful with your chosen colors so that the combinations are able to neutralize the intrinsic negative cultural connotations, if any, of some of these colors.
An effective web design should display complementary color arrangements of shades, tones, tints, to entice and maintain interest of the visitors. You may even add textures to alter colors. You can make your chosen color appear darker by using a roughly textured surface while using a smooth surface will lighten up the same color.

Experts are of the opinion that most web browsers can see only 256 colors. However, since the 256-color pallet isn’t shared by all browsers at present, the reduced number stands at 216. So, if your website uses colors beyond this 216 color pallet, they will get distorted in some of the browsers, which in turn will hinder the message that you want to convey. So, it’s better to play it safe and pick colors within this 216 color pallet.

In brief, don’t drive away your visitors by using irritating colors or the wrong color combinations. Rather, go by time tested ways and seek expert advice to design an attractive website in soothing and aesthetic colors.