Colors - how they impact web design

Understanding colors and their impact on web design

* Written by - James Godwin, a Freelance Web Designer in Bristol, UK. A Creative Website Designer providing Freelance Web design Services at affordable rates.

Colors are one of the most powerful mediums of non verbal communication. They have the power to convey messages and meanings more effectively. Colors shape our thoughts and emotions and can greatly impact our buying habits too! That's why advertisements are generally full of colors! They are known to invoke 80% of change in motivation to buy a product especially with online shopping.

Web designers hence have a very crucial job. They need to select the right color scheme to motivate your customers to buy from your website and also portray the right impression of your business.

Overall, colors help us build websites that are perfect for your business. The color spectrum has warm colors towards the red area and cool colors towards the blue side. Other than these color effects each color represents a particular mood or portrays a particular quality. For example, blue is a color that represents authority, success and a feeling of security. That is why many trusted brands and fortune 500s have blue color in their logos. Orange color combined with red and yellow in your color scheme portrays fun and creativity. It is a more light hearted and high spirited color that can be used in kid's stores or some kind of teenage site.

Well, every color has a meaning and as far as web design is concerned, you need to be able to use the color combinations appropriately to create an impact on the minds of your customers. Subconsciously, we trust non verbal indicators that influence most of our buying decisions. An appealing combination of colors is hence important for a good design.

Be careful which colors you select for the various links, texts, hover and background. Make sure they complement each other perfectly. Avoid too much black or too much white. Using these two colors in combination or in shades mixed with a tinge of red or orange or any other color can give a great effect.
Red is an eye catching color and can be used for banner text and advertisements. However excess use of red spoils the entire purpose of the banner. Well, make sure you use correct contrast in colors to give it the perfect after effect.

Some combinations are totally displeasing and should be avoided. Purple and green either in the background or text - these colors when used with each other totally spoil the effect of the page. Other color combinations that must be avoided are light colors like yellow background and white text or vice versa. It causes strain on the eyes and your customers to not have that much patience to read through your website with that much trouble. Similarly, using two dark colors together makes the site look dull - kind of lazy.

Considering the brand image you want to create, make sure that you decide upon the color scheme you want to use for your website even before you actually start designing it. Hiring web designers or freelance web designers could be a good choice and their experience with creating websites can be of great help!

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