Choosing your website colors is a fun part of the web design process! Colors play a HUGE part in web design and can affect your user’s experience, how your content is digested, and even your website’s bounce rate!

In this post, I’m sharing 4 rules of thumb to follow when selecting your website’s colors so that your website is enjoyable to look at and effectively communicates and connects with your ideal clients.

Start With Your Branding

Your website is an extension of your brand so it should be consistent with your branding. We want website visitors to land on your site and immediately recognize it as your brand.

Choose Colors That Compliment

When your website has clashing colors or colors that are too intense, it can distract from the CONTENT on your website – which is what we want visitors to look at! This doesn’t mean you have to stick to subtle and muted colors, but it’s important to understand how colors affect your website visitor’s experience of your website. Read more about colors and how they affect how we feel here.

Consider The Photos You Are Using

A great place to start when figuring out what colors you can use on your website is to use the photos you will be using as your guide. You definitely don’t want to settle on a website palette only to have it conflict with the images you’ll be using in your design.

Stick With 3 Main Colors

A general rule of thumb in visual design is to select 3 primary colors you’ll use in 80-90% of the design and 1 highlighting color that you can use to draw focus to important elements. When a website is over-designed, cluttered, overwhelming, or distracting, it won’t be able to produce the results you need – like more leads and booked discovery calls.

So, to sum it all up:

1. Stay within your branding guidelines.
2. Reference the photos you’ll be using in your design for color inspiration.
3. Stick with 3 primary colors and 1 highlighting color.
4. Choose colors that complement, not clash.

What colors are you drawn to? Warmer tones or cooler tones? A great way to gather color inspo is over on Pinterest! Create a new board to gather design and color inspiration for your website. It’s a great way to communicate your design likes with your web designer!