How To Choose Site Colors

[tommydreamers]

At any time I'm designing a website I understand that using color is key. A number of colors are hard to read, too bright, and some are just ordinary ugly.

How do you choose the colors for your web site?

What colors are the best... Which ones sketch people in?

[Giselle]

Hello Tommydreamers,

Some of my webpages are bright loud colors, others are quiet and subdued. A lot depends if I am going to use a texture for the background also, and a lot depends upon the webpage itself. What I mean is if you are selling fine jewelry then you would want a subdued elegant looking background. The main thing for me is the text is readable on the background.

This link might help you also, if you click on the color name, you will see the color background and what text will go with the background color, this has helped me out a lot also.

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_colornames.asp

[Cricket]

I look for sites that show color combinations together until I find something I like, then I begin tweaking until I have the look I am going for.

http://www.colorcombos.com/combolibrary.html

[paperkool]

I find color choice is dependent upon what type of site I'm making.
Ultimately there must be a sharp contrast between the text and the background for clear reading.

I relate to classic commercial color value: red insites excitement

Blue is thought of as cool or coolness.

Green is relatively weird.

Yellow: is in my mind generally abstract and so on.

White is always good for a back ground, when you cant think of anything else. White works. Look at Google and Yahoo. Basically do what they do, if you get stuck for a color to use.

[synbitz]

uhm, for my site I used a color picker and just tried to keep the colors in the same "line" of brightness what i mean is if your using BLACK as in #000000 the other colors in your graphical layout should also be dark

[paperkool]

Originally Posted by synbitz

uhm, for my site I used a color picker and just tried to keep the colors in the same "line" of brightness what i mean is if your using BLACK as in #000000 the other colors in your graphical layout should also be dark

If it makes you feel good great, however practically that's a bad idea.

It has been proven that the human eye can 'decipher contrast better.'

If you got black text, how on earth do you expect folk to see the rest of the dark stuff? umh?

[htmlbasictutor]

There are various site that help you pick a colour scheme if you need help. Here's a few ideas to get your started:

Start with a colour and see what colours go with it:
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html <-- my favourite
http://www.gpeters.com/color/color-schemes.php
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/index.php (kind of, you upload a picture)
http://colormixers.com/mixers/cmr/

Ready made colour scheme sets:
http://www.colorcombos.com/
http://www.firewheeldesign.com/spark...rn_winners.php
http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/...hp?sort=rating

Once you have selected your colour scheme, you really need to be careful how you combine the colours together. If the foreground and background colours do not have enough contrast then this creates a problem. When there is not enough colour contrast, people with and without vision problems can't see your web page and leave.

More info on the colour contrast issue: http://www.webpagemistakes.ca/effect...lour-contrast/

[w-e-b-master]

I use intuition. And I make fixes till the final result will satisfy my eyes.

[Josh Jones]

Here's some quick resources to help you on your way www.colourlovers.com

[C()nker]

Using subtle, desaturated colors usually works for me.

Then incorporate the logo somehow and make the colors complementary for a stand-out appearance or just keep the color scheme the same for the connected feel.