You’ve probably heard the saying “less is more”.
When it comes to choosing colours for your website, this couldn’t be more true.
People react to colours as soon as they see them. They evoke an emotional response. Colours are so powerful in fact, they can influence a customer's buying decision.
It’s why they’re such a vital tool in marketing because they’re astonishingly good at evoking a feeling.
Surely the more attention-grabbing colours the better, right? Quite the opposite actually.
The wrong colours can have a different effect to the one you intended. Too many of them can instantly turn a potential customer away.
Minimal colour schemes are where you want to be.
Different colours represent different emotions. You don’t want to bombard your visitors with an overload of loud, competing colours. That would be like putting your customer in a room full of people yelling instructions, then telling them to take notes.
A perfectly curated colour palette that conveys trust, meaning, and recognition can earn you a customer for life.
But how much colour is too much?
A good rule of thumb is to make sure you can only count them one hand. Anything more than that and you’re tipping into overwhelm territory.
How do you choose the right colours?
Remembering the one hand rule, let’s break them down into three types of colour:
- Central: Your central colours should take up no more than two fingers. These colours will be the main players throughout your whole website. They’re usually part of your overall branding colour palette.
- Accent: The accent colour takes up another finger. This is the colour that demands attention among the others, so use it sparingly. You’ll usually see this on buttons, icons, or headlines that need to “pop”.
- Neutral: This colour takes up another finger. This is the colour that is barely there. You’ll usually find it in the background, or large spaces that aren’t intended to draw attention.
This is by no means a strict formula, but it helps you to narrow down the right palette.
If you’re working with a designer, they might decide to add an extra colour, or even take one away. The main thing that matters is how your audience will respond to it. A good designer will have that as a priority in anything they create.
Take a look at some of your favourite websites and try to see if you can recognise what their central, accent and neutral colours are.
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