In the creation of any kind of website (i.e. blogs, forums…) one of the most important aspects that you need to consider when you are going to design it is related to the interface between the final user and your website. That interface could be more or less amiable depending of the color scheme or palette that you have.
I know that is not possible to everyone to design its own website, so many times the people let their designer to make that choice. If that is the case, you suppose that your designer know about the website colors’ theory, or not? In this post I will give you the necessary tips to help you with the choice of a color pallete for your website.
Color Meanings
Do you know that colors have different meanings? Yes! Depending of the color your website will look adapted according to its niche. But what the colors mean? Let’s check it out:
Red: This color symbolizes energy, action, strength, leadership, courage. This color stimulates people to make quick decisions, is inherently exciting and the more color red the more the level of energy perceived. It draws attention and it is specially used on Marketing to focus the people attention on a particular element. That’s the reason why many people use this colors on landing pages.
Pink: This color symbolizes love, friendship, beauty. This color is a mix of a kind of red and a passive blue, that’s the reason why it represents passiveness, calming the mind and nerves. Also, it denotes feminine qualities, which make it one of the preferred colors of adolescent girls.
Brown: This color symbolizes stability, simplicity, health, reliability. It is the color of earth and people associate it with nature.
Orange: This color symbolizes happiness, creativity, determination, stimulation. It is quite similar to red and many people use to misinterpret it, but think well about it. This color shares some properties with the red, but if you want to attract the people attention you should definitively use red.
Gold: This one symbolizes wisdom and wealth. This is the color of riches, and you could use it if you want to create feelings of success, good health, relaxation or personal power.
Yellow: Yellow represents optimism, enlightenment and happiness, stimulating metal and physical activity. Like red, this one is also good to attract attention, so this is why you can find landing pages with yellow and red squares.
Green: Green symbolizes life, growth, health, fertility, endurance. Like brown, this color is associated to nature.
Blue: This color represents peace, youth, spirituality, trust. This is the most favorite color among people due to it is the color of sky and the ocean, being perceived as a constant in our lives. It is perfect to inspire calming, cooling, depth and stability.
Gray: This is a monotonic color which represents security, formality, maturity. It is great because it can be mix with any color, but it should be mix with a vivid color if you don’t want to inspire sadness or depression.
Black: This color can be interpreted by many things, but basically it represents seriousness, conventionalism, Mystery. Black is authoritative and powerful but you should mix it with light colors if you don’t want to inspire death, emptyness, fear or evil.
Well those are the most basic color meanings, of course I’m not a proffesional on the topic but however you can guide yourself with this article. So once you know the color that you are going to implement on your site, what do you need to do next? How do you know which colors are mixable with it? Well, check out the following resources & tools that I collected for you:
- The Color Wizard 3.0 : The Color Wizard is a color matching application for anyone who wants to create designs with great looking colors. It generates a pallete of colors which look good among them.
- ColorToy 2.0: This is is a Flash based color scheme generator and picker. It generates complementary color schemes based on your inputted color values or randomly, which is much more fun.
- COLOURlovers: COLOURlovers™ is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. It gives the people who use color - whether for ad campaigns, product design, or in architectural specification - a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.
With the information provided here and with the help of the resources mentioned above, you should be able to choose the colors that combine with your site personality/niche.
Hi! My name is Javier but everybody calls me Javo. I am partial-time blogger and I'm specialized in Blogging and Internet Marketing tips. Here you can find tips to make money online ... 
Hmm
Very interesting. I never thought colors ment anything. I only thought it was to seperate you from the rest of tge pack.
I know in my case my colors on my blog were picked out by the designer. Next time thought I will probably pick my own colors.
Bruno Augers last blog post..How to Make your Blog a Success
Color combinations are a very important part of a site’s design. Great job on composing this list Mr Javo!
Sly from SlyVisions dot Coms last blog post..Cartoon: Are You a Workaholic?
Thanks Sly! Well Bruno, did you never ask to yourself why all the banners related with diets are green/blue? Here is the answer!
great post…never thought this way about colors…..
I do prefer the colors blue and green. professionality and money
Husseins last blog post..SEO Keyword Name in Comments, Should I Approve Them?
Nice! my blog portrays peacefulness
Tom - StandOutBlogger.coms last blog post..10 Random Questions You’Ve Never Thought of Asking
Color is obviously very important, but different colors mean different things to different people and cultures, they are not quite so rigid as you imply. For instance, did you know that it used to be pink for boys, blue for girls not the current common way around and that many cultures use white, rather than black, in their funeral rites? Then, of course there are those people who have synesthesia…
Hey David great advice! I didn’t know that… Thank you very much for sharing that with us, certainly time and cultures change so I think this list could be useful in the present time
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Interesting, im not the best in this matter so i will integrate this knowledge on my project of web.
This is quite interesting MJ. I want you to take a look at http://www.DennisEdell.com and let me know what you think of the color scheme.
Personally I think it just looks really cool lol, especially with my logo.
Oh BTW, it is not officially launched yet, no matter what it says LOL.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Do Advertisers Judge You By Design? What Do You Think…
Hey Dennis the new colors of your theme are really good! It seems more serious.
Thanks buddy! I needed something to blend my logo well…I think I got it, with the help of my designer
Dennis Edells last blog post..Do Advertisers Judge You By Design? What Do You Think…
Colors appear to have more of an effect than they could be assumed to have. We look at them and take into account that they could have an effect on us, but we don’t tend to be able to gauge what percentage of our reactions/interactions are based on the colors we were presented with.
Armen Shirvanians last blog post..Spoken/Written Words vs. Intent
It seems like dark blue have a better conversion of readership!
Ben Peis last blog post..Make Money Blogging Community Training - Part 1
Good list to get us thinking about this! But, where is purple (one of my favorites :cry:? I have a post about “the color red in blog design” — as an example of why you can’t assume others like the colors that you do. Some unexpected responses are subconscious, rooted in the visitor’s psychological and cultural influences. Poor color contrast can inhibit navigation of your blog, especially for those who are colorblind. Used wisely color can to draw visitors into your blog and help them find your content. I’d add these resources to yours Mr. Javo: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_symbolism_and_psychology and a color filter at http://colorfilter.wickline.org/.
SBAs last blog post..A Beautiful Blogger Table of Contents
Hey thank you very much for these resources, they worth the reading.
I skipped some colors because they are too much, I just wanted to explain the basic ones… you can find anything related with colors by searching on squidoo pages, google or wikipedia as you shared!
I was really paying much attention to my site’s color…I guess I don’t have much liberty to choose one either…
Interesting! I don’t realize that color has its own meaning. I know understand why I’m have a certain liking for orange…
Yan
Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..The Art of Writing Catchy Articles
thanks for giving the meanings of colors in making a website! God bless!