When we are designing a website we often pay particular attention to the quality of the written word. We need to craft our message very carefully so that we portray all the more important elements in as short a space of time as possible. We know that surfers are very busy people and tend to flit around from site to site with only a few seconds available for each page.

Psychologists tell us that the first impression is very important and that a few second reaction can often mean the difference between persuading someone to stay and further investigate or continue on their journey. This tells us that while we should always focus on the quality of our written content, the very design and appearance of the site is most important. Choosing the correct colors for your website can be more than just an arbitrary decision, or the use of a particular shade because it happens to be “your favorite color.”

Sometimes you will find that you are steered in a certain direction due to the very nature of your site, the product or service that you may be offering, or the very reason for its construction in the first place. While this may mean that you are leaning toward primary colors, pastel colors, stark blacks or whites, you nevertheless need to ensure that you have a balance between your colors and shades – in other words focus on a color scheme.

While fundamentally a color scheme must always be pleasing on the eye, unless the very reason for your website is to provoke and annoy, there are nevertheless many different ways to achieve a desired result. If you’re working with a client who has certain principle colors, you can suggest different tones and complementary shades with other colors that blend in nicely.

If you have a clean sheet of paper and are looking for some inspiration, there are numerous resources on the Web available to you. Several sites allow you to select different palettes or to view those that others have created before you. The power and creativity of these programs allow us to instantly see whether something looks pleasing to us or could “work” for a particular environment or site. Design programs work with a mixture of Pantone colors or hex codes and there are really an almost infinite number of variations available.

If you find that you need to turn to other sources for inspiration and discover a particularly interesting scheme through a random photograph, there are several different online tools that can help you to determine the actual code of the color that you like, also known as its hex value. In addition, design programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photo Paint can “sample” the color from a photograph or a scan and replicate it perfectly.

When you are surfing the web yourself, you may come across a website that you particularly like. The color scheme may be very attractive to you and you might be wondering what colors are represented. You guessed it – you can turn to a website that allows you to enter a particular URL and return the color value that is used.

Here are some resources:

Adobe PhotoShop

Corel Photo Paint

Color Wheel Pro – See Color Theory in Action

Pictaculous – Color Palate Generator

Color Schemer – Instant Color Schemes

I Like Your Colors – URL Analyser

How did you choose your website colors?

Adam Toren