While designing a web site one of the primary considerations is the color scheme. It is very important to select a judicious color scheme. Sometimes the user wants the company colors employed in the scheme. Go about selecting the colors in a wise manner.
A wrong choice can ruin an otherwise well made site.
The color palette is broadly divided in three categories: -Warm colors, cool colors and neutral colors.
Warm Colors
Warm colors have an exciting and invigorating effect on the user. Red, pink, yellow, orange and gold are the warm colors. On their own they may become over stimulating and oppressive so use it in contrast with a muter shade. The various meanings associated with these colors are
• Red shows love, energy, passion, heat, anger, danger, warning
• Pink is happy, feminine and sweet. Its negative side shows immaturity and weakness.
• Yellow depicts brightness, energy happiness. It also represents cowardice and irresponsibility.
• Orange shows courage, confidence, warmth, sluggishness and ignorance
• Gold shows wealth, prosperity and greed.
Cool colors
They have a calm, soothing effect. Blue, purple, silver and green are the cool colors. But used excessively on their own they may make the site impersonal and dull. Synchronizing a cool color with a warmer hue gives great results. Representation of each color:
• Blue shows tranquility, trust and intelligence. Their negative connotations are coldness and fear. Blue also is representative of masculinity
• Green depicts money, fertility growth healing. On the flip side it denotes envy, greed and jealousy.
• Purple shows luxury, royalty, ambition, mystery
• Silver represents glamour, high tech, sleek.
Neutral colors
Neutral colors brown black tan white, gray. On their own they are nondescript and dull. They are great for balancing the effect of other colors. Site design with neutral color pepped up with other brighter colors is ideal.
The various types of color schemes used are
• Monochromatic
• Same group.
• Contrast
Monochromatic color scheme uses variation of only one color for the entire design
This classy scheme works very well for business web sites. Although too much dependence on a single color may turn boring and a judicious use of a neutral color may elevate the problem.
Same Group color scheme uses two similar looking colors e.g. Blue and purple or red and orange. This may turn out to be a very elegant design. Ensure that too much usage of similar looking palette does not make your site monotonous.
Contrast color scheme uses two absolutely opposite colors e.g. black and white, red and green, blue and orange. Sometimes the contrast becomes too strong and the resultant site is glaring to the eyes. To get over this pick a softer hue of one color to offset the other. For instance royal blue and orange will be horrendous but a pale sky blue used with a peachy orange would look fresh.
If the site has a very strident color scheme, it distracts from the content. The colors should enhance the site and not divert attention from it.
While designing your site’s color scheme choose from the 216-color palette the web browsers can see. Using the colors outside this palette will result in dithering, giving a speckled look to the object. So when using solid color as a design element choose browser safe colors only.
Yellow is a color that the eye catches first. Use it for banners and teasers. Once you have dragged the user’s attention to your website, there is no point in giving eye fatigue. Avoid excessive use of red and yellow.
Some colors are difficult to read. like orange on blue background. If your site colors is giving the users a headache, the popularity will drop naturally.
On the other hand the site becomes drab and monotonous if it has too few colors or predominantly white. Agreed white is a good background for large chunks of text, but jazz it up with textures and contrasting buttons.
Do not make the mistake of comparing the colors of your printed matter with those on your site. Some times what may be a really exquisite color scheme on a printed card may not turn out so well on the screen. Each color is represented differently on say a brochure and the monitor.
Keep your color scheme consistent throughout. It is ok to choose purple as hyperlink color but ensure that it is the same all over. Avoid variations in text color or a drastic change in color scheme between pages.
The contrast between the text color and the background should be enough to be differentiated without being glaring.
Take the age of the targeted viewers into consideration. Kids portals should have vivid and contrasting palette where as a site for more mature section would be toned down and elegant.
A website having an exquisitely planned color scheme is a delight to view. Take care of these pointers and turn your website into elegance personified.
http://www.webdesignplaza.com/web-design-articles-aviva.html
