Importance of Color in Web Design

COLOR is an important element of design that is used to create ideas, convey messages, invoke feelings, and accentuate areas of interest.

Since it affects the mood of viewers, Website designers should treat the association of color as seriously as the design of graphics and layout.

Psychology of color

Colors often have different meanings in various cultures. Certain colors tend to invoke a similar reaction from most people - the overall difference being in the shade or tones used. Colors determine the psychological effect on viewers.

Neutral Colors include white, black, gray and colors that contain a significant amount of gray.

White - Innocence or sterility
Black - Elegance or Evil.

Choosing Colors

Color is one of the primary keys to good web design. Colors should be chosen wisely as it affects the mood of the viewers. It should be chosen in such a way which suits the subject of the website.

Choosing colors for website involves more than deciding which colors you like. Your favorite colors are not as pleasing when they are used together. Achieving color harmony is a science, and knowing how to arrange colors is an art.

Browser-safe palette

The browser-safe palette of 216 colors gives consistent and predictable results across the MacOS, UNIX, and Windows platforms. But it just limits to 256 colors. The only reason to use browser-safe palette is if you feel your website will be viewed from a 256 color (8-bit) computer system. Or else, most computers today can render thousands or millions of colors. But rather than the number of color choices, it’s more important to know how to combine colors in pleasing and effective ways.

It’ll be effective if you limit the color palette to 2 or 3 major colors (with shade variations). Limited colors on web and in color palette of graphics means smaller file sizes, faster loading.

Conclusion

Color is a powerful weapon. Color is the first thing we notice and often is the last thing we remember. The same two sites done in different colors will yield different results. So, we need to give serious thought to color selection.

Geetha, at Geetha Zone Design offers professional web design services at an affordable rate. As for education, she is a post graduate in computer science and engineering and she finds pleasure and fun in creating websites.