Color Psychology in Web Design

Nobody wants to visit a messy website, be it a site with horrible layout, missing white space, or terrible colors. On the other hand, a well designed website leaves visitors with good impression and may lead to more conversions.

Long story short, website design is as important as the development itself.

Color is one of the salient elements in web design as it can convey different emotions. Therefore, understanding the emotional attributes of some of the primary colors would be very useful.

Red

Red is an attractive, dramatic, and rich color. Since it is the color of fire and blood, red evokes adrenaline and tension. Dark red tones are usually associated with autumn and harvest season. Red comes in handy to increase desire.

Green

Generally, green is a versatile color. Green is most often associated with nature, and it is thought to symbolize growth, freshness and hope. When light green is placed on a black background, it stands out very much, implying the color is highly recommended colFor for call to action buttons.

Blue

Blue is often considered as the color that everyone likes as it symbolizes openness, intelligence, confidence, and calmness. For instance, companies like Facebook, PayPal, and IBM uses blue as their logo color. On the other hand, it is known that blue can reduce appetite.

Orange

Orange is an active and energetic color because it is considered to bring happiness, enthusiasm and creativity. Orange is suitable for restaurant websites or other food-related sites because orange stimulates metabolism and appetite.

Yellow

Yellow, the color of the sun, communicates cheerfulness, happiness and energy. However, it is believed that too much yellow is not recommended as it can generate too much power.

Purple

Historically speaking, purple is often associated with royalty and power. However, to this day, purple is one of the least used colors in web design. If you are trying to create a website design that stands out from the crowd, think about using purple as your dominant color.

White

In Western culture, white is considered the color of perfection, light, and purity. In Chinese culture, interestingly, white is a color associated with death or mourning. Such culture differences should be taken into consideration when choosing colors. Essentially, white color in websites is often ignored because it is the default background color.

Black

One can either see black as the color of death and crime or as the color of power, luxury and power. Contrasting a bright color against black and combining it with gold are some of the creative ways to use black.

Although color psychology does determine how visitors view a site, keep in mind that there is no wrong color to use. The harmony that exists among all the colors you select plays a crucial role in the success of a color scheme.