Monday, July 2, 2007

Learn How to Pick The Best Color Scheme For Your Website

Choosing The Right Color Scheme Can Be Simple And Easy

One of the hardest parts that anyone has to face when designing a website is the color scheme. Most people know that the difference between using a good scheme and a bad scheme can be the difference of a site succeeding or failing. The colors of a site convey the overall feel and mood of your site, so it is important to pick colors that go along with your company's goal or idea. Even if you can't remember your middle school art class, the rules of creating a color scheme for a website are fairly easy.

Keep it Simple

One of the most important parts when developing you site's color scheme is to only pick a few basic colors. In fact, if you are planning to use more than 5 colors on your site you are using too much. It can be very hard for many people to find the information that they are looking for when they can not even see it. Also it is important to remember that using an uncommon color is not ideal. In fact, using the browser-safe web palette is not a bad idea. While many computers can now display a wide range of colors, there are a few that still only show a few basic colors. In fact, using the web safe palette is fairly easy because many programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and other web tools have the palette built in.

Text

The pages text is absolutely the most important part of any website. I have never understood why many sites make their text so hard to read. If someone can read it, they probably are not going to stay at your site and more than likely not buy your product. As a general rule, try to use black as the main text of the site and use lighter text for graphics and other parts. At the same time, don't forget to use a font that is clear and simple to read.

Picking the Colors

When picking the colors for you site there are several different ways you can go about picking them. First, you can use complementary colors which are colors opposite to each other. Or you could use analog colors which are colors that are located right beside each other on a color wheel. And one more very pleasing color combination is to use chromatic colors or different shades of the same color. However, whichever one that you pick remember to keep your site easy to read and pleasing to the eyes.

The color combinations that can be used on a website are endless, however it is very important to remember the basics of choosing a color scheme. While you may be tempted to get creative and choose a variety of colors, make sure they go together and that they represent the look and feel of your company.

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