Don’t forget to carefully consider your color choices!
Designing a Web site or Landing Page? Don’t forget to carefully consider your color choices!
After I posted the blog about “Web site best practices,” I felt I should also focus on another aspect of Web site layout that is very important. The color selection!
Colors are a very important element in Web design and are often overlooked. Colors illicit a feeling or give an impression to people. It’s important for you to know your target audience well and understand what each color means to them.
Here is an overview (in general) of what colors mean (for the Western Culture):
Warm Colors
- Red: Attention getting, reflects energy, can motivate a person to act
- Orange: Stimulates the appetite, symbolizes health
- Yellow: Hope or energy. Can also mean weakness or illness
Cool Colors
- Green: Health, growth, & wealth. Can also mean spring and renewal
- Blue: This is considered the “safe” color. Signifies intelligence, reassurance & trust. Can also be an appetite suppressant and can signify sadness
- Purple: Spiritual, mysterious, royalty and richness
Neutral Colors
- Black: Power, elegance and sophistication. Can also mean death, evil, anger and sadness
- White: Cleanliness, purity, life and marriage
- Grey: Security, maturity, reliability. Also gloominess
- Brown: Credibility, stability, home and earth
As I said previously, you also need to be aware of your audience when choosing colors. For example, adults prefer more subdued colors while children prefer bright, bold colors. Highly educated people prefer colors that are more obscure like mauve, lilac and taupe. The working class prefers colors they can name like red, yellow and blue. Men prefer blues and greens while women prefer red and orange. To complicate things more, different cultures have different meanings for different colors. It is best to really research and understand your target before deciding on any colors.