Choosing your website colour palette
June 24th, 2009 by AnthonyZ
You might have noticed in your journey on the web that some organisations websites look so professional, while others come off very amateurish. These organisations might even have similar looking websites. So how can two organisations with similar, professional concepts be so different?
Choosing the right colour palette has a lot to do with it. Your choice in colour palette can play a vital role in the success of your website, saving your website from appearing amateurish and possibly even hard to read.
So what makes for a great colour palette?
Limit your palette
Use only a few colours! You might use colours to emphasize headings, links, graphical elements and other key information. Remember, colour is a great tool to emphasize important aspects of your website.
Your website background image, which holds no real value as a source of information on your products, does not need to be vibrant and full of colour. It will only distract your visitor from the information you are presenting. Try instead; picking a subtle colour which complements your website content and helps to highlight the important part of your website (which is of course, your products!)
The right colours
Colours are emotive and your visitors will be able to feel and connect with your brand, if you choose the right colours. Using dark colours might make it difficult for your visitors to make that connection. On the other hand, your visitor demographic might be right into that sort of thing – so the right colour is a choice you make based on who you want to reach and connect with.
Be consistent
Consistency is important so that your visitor does not become confused with your website, and ultimately close it. For example, if you decide the hyperlinks on your website will be orange, they should remain orange on all pages.
All your other branding material should also follow this consistency. Colour defines your brand. In the eyes of your customer, if you can’t keep the colour palette for your brand consistent, will you be consistent for them? Colour also helps your customer identify your brand. If the Netregistry @ symbol suddenly turned green, would that confuse our identity?
So how do you choose a great colour palette?
Ultimately the task of choosing a great colour palette is the role of a professional web designer.
Netregistry has a very affordable, quality web design service from only AU$199!
If you would like to give choosing your own colour palette a shot, you can also try Pictaculous (a colour palette generator). If you already have a company logo you can upload it and Pictaculous will tell you what colour palette goes with it.
Never miss an article. Sign up for free Brainstorm updates by RSS or email.
Please share this post with others:
 |
 |
There is one notable omission in this article – the failure to mention the importance of selecting appropriate text/background colour pairs that have colour contrast/luminance values that will make content adequately visible to those with low vision and/or colour blindness (not to mention the rest of us.)
Accessibility should be part of the design process from the very outset; if the colours that identify your brand either prevent or make it difficult for prospective customers to read your content, they might just as easily become the colours associated with “the site I can’t read.”
If you are letting a “professional web designer” choose your palette, make sure that THEY are aware of this issue (as many appear not to be) and that you specify that your site should be fully accessible.
A great tool for checking colours is the Juicy Studio Firefox colour analyser extension. (See http://juicystudio.com/article/colour-contrast-analyser-firefox-extension.php) You might want to try running it against this very blog page, as there are a few colour pairs that need attention
Smiffy brings up interesting points and admittedly I had intended on covering this in another topic as to not drag this one on much longer. I had intended on suggesting automated checks of your website with the Check My Colours tool. It doesn’t matter what browser you develop in, and provides a detailed report on contrast ratio, brightness and colour differences.
Thanks for all the colour choosers guys, here’s another one to add (colour wheel) http://gxi.co.za/building-your-brand/196-choosing-the-correct-colours-for-branding.html