One of the best parts of any project can be when you get to pick the colors. Say it’s a paint color or even a product you’re picking out at the grocery store, it is just fun. When thinking about website development, it can be just as fun.

Many consumer behavior studies suggest that a significant portion of consumer product decision is based on reaction and availability of color: so how does one go about picking the right colors for website design?

What is the personality of your company?

Many, many decisions depend on branding. One of the best first steps to the right website color selection is to reference your branding. Consult your branding to find out the personality of your company. For example, say you are a bank. Your branding likely indicates that you are responsible, ethical and trustworthy. So what are the colors that often indicate those attributes?

Green – suggest stability, endurance and safety

Gold – indicates richness, prestige and quality

Dark Blue – integrity and seriousness

It is likely that if you a have a pretty solid brand to begin with, your color scheme is already somewhat determined. But a look at how tertiary color personalities can work with your existing branding can increase the visual impact of your website.

What do other colors indicate?

Red - passion and courage

Purple - wealth and mystery

Yellow – happiness and intensity

White - purity and simplicity

Black - power and elegance

As a custom software development team that works with so many entrepreneurs, we know their branding is not always as far along as an established company. This is where we can really help them establish a solid personality with their website design and color schemes.

Shades of Gray: Tone and Shade

These attributes of color creation can dramatically change the attitude of a color/color scheme; in essence they set the personality for the color scheme. Tone is the degree to which a color is mixed with white. Shade is the degree to which it is mixed with its complementary color or black to make it darker. The more saturated the color is (less white, black or complementary) the truer it is to its natural state.

These ‘same’ colors can indicate completely different personalities and product/service types, it is their tone that changes the way you view them. For instance, Color Scheme 1 is reminiscent of Google’s color scheme and has a playful, child-like personality to it. Color Scheme 2 could represent a variety of personalities, but the first two things it reminds us of is a natural product or baby products. This is because it has a lower tone (more white). This makes sense because white usually denotes purity and simplicity: two natural personifications of natural and baby products.

Conversely, look at what happens when you increase the saturation and add a complementary color or black to make it darker. When creating color schemes, tone and shade are often the most important indicators that colors work well together. This is obviously not a hard and fast rule, but can be a simple way to determine color schemes for your website.

Color Intensity for Website Design

Given that there is quite a bit of real estate when you are thinking of a website, flooding it with highly intense colors can make it challenging to look at. Conversely, if you make the color schemes too light, it can be difficult to read. One of the ways to balance this is with our friend contrast.

Granted, the above illustrations have by no means the greatest color combinations. But in pure example, this should show you how to take the color background you want or the color text you would like, and pair it with something that is easier to read. If your website is very text and information heavy, this is an important consideration.

There is sometimes a personality association that comes with color schemes that are too intense. This doesn’t mean that intense color schemes don’t work for some companies, but they may not draw the right associations that your company would like. The impact of selecting intense color schemes can often discredit certain kinds of companies, which is why heavy consideration on color is needed.

Colors are not only fun, but are a critical part of your website design. Color selection is one of the many things that our internal team of user experience design and website developers can assist you with at Amadeus Consulting. Learn more about Amadeus Consulting’s extensive 16 year history with website development for our hundreds of clients.