Everything that appeals to the human eye has colour. Each shade and hue evokes a certain feeling or memory that either draws us closer to the colour or causes us to instinctively turn away. In fact, many of us associate colours with certain psychological aspects, while other colours are cultivated by the things we experience in our lives.

This is why colour matters when creating your website. You want to create a certain emotion in your customers when they browse through it, allowing them to form a positive relationship with your company before you’ve even begun talking! Different colours elicit different moods, so you want to make sure you use the right one for your website. Here’s what you need to know about colour theory and how this improves your web design:

The Three Categories of Colour

Most of us have learned about the three categories of colour in primary school, but it’s important to remember the groupings and how they function together.

The colour wheel is made of three types of colours:

  • Primary colours are made up of red, blue, and yellow. These colours cannot be created by mixing other colours with each other.
  • Secondary colours are made up of purple, orange, and green. These are created by mixing two primary colours together.
  • Tertiary colours are formed by mixing primary and secondary colours with each other. Blue-green and red-orange are examples of tertiary colours.

Complementary Colours

Understanding which colours look great together is crucial for designing your website. These will create appealing visuals that will make your website look more arresting and attractive while invoking certain emotions in your audience.

Complementary colours are colours that are found opposite to each other on the colour wheel. These are often contrasting, which instantly brightens and adds vibrance to your designs. They can also be used to emphasise a specific mood in your website, or even to stack feelings on top of the primary feeling you want your visitor to feel.

For example, if you want to make certain aspects of your website stand out, use blue and orange. This combination of colours is effective at drawing attention because it provides the highest contrast among the complementary colours while emphasising each other. Orange gives more prominence to the cool and calm feel of blue, while blue spotlights the electricity, warmth, and vibrance of orange.

Creating Your Blog’s Atmosphere Through Colour

Now that you know the basics of colour theory, it’s time to know which colours are most popularly associated with certain emotions.

Primary Colours

  • Red is usually used to denote movement and energy. It’s warm, dramatic, and dynamic.
  • Blue is calming, and is commonly used in websites that intend to invoke a relaxing and tranquil mood. It’s also a strong colour that is commonly used to show the credibility and seriousness of a company.
  • Yellow is a bright colour usually associated with positivity, excitement, and electricity. Given its vivid hue, it’s great for accents to draw attention to specific details on a website.

Secondary Colours

  • Green is similar to blue in that it evokes a tranquil, calm, and professional mood in a website. It’s commonly used in websites that focus on nature, business, and finances.
  • Orange is warm, rich, and striking. However, this is a tricky colour to use in websites as browsers tend to display this shade differently, so this functions best as an accent.
  • Purple is reminiscent of luxury, nobility, and sometimes mystery. It combines the serenity of blue with the fierceness of red. It’s used for modern websites targeted at younger audiences, or businesses that have a spiritual—even magical—aspect to their products or services.

Neutral Colours

  • Black is a strong and powerful colour to use in a website. However, it should also be used as an accent instead of the principal colour, as an overwhelming sea of black may strain the visitor’s eyes.
  • White may not be a colour you’d consider for your website, but it can be used powerfully if used in the form of white or negative space. This will emphasise other areas of your website that you want your visitors to pay attention to.
  • Grey is a colour that denotes quietness, strength, and authority. It’s a great colour to use with other brighter colours to balance any brightness or vibrance.

Conclusion

Integrating colour theory into your website is a surefire way to transform the way your visitors feel when browsing your website. Not only will it grab the attention of your visitors, but it will present your website in a way that’s visually arresting and unique.

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