Web Design - Factors That Influence The Choice Of Colors

By Author: Alan L Smith
Total Articles: 1285
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Colors not only affect life but also the usability of the websites. This is the reason why they play a crucial role in the success of any web design. There is wide choice of colors for the web designers but some have to be used and some have to be avoided. This decision depends on the following factors.

Visitor’s Attention:

In most of the web pages the designer mentions the call to action but also needs to draw the visitor’s attention towards it. To make the visitor focus his attention on the things you want him/her to focus on, you need to use some street smart tricks. The pastels should be used to color the content while the rich colors should be used for the things that you want in limelight. Some designers tend to use even contrast for drawing the visitor’s attention.

Effect on Emotions:

It is said that the eyes are the windows of the brain. Not only human beings but also the animals, birds and insects are affected by the color of different things around them. In case of usability of a website the designer needs to take into consideration the effect of the color on the mind of the visitors. ...
... There are bright colors like purple and soothing colors like blue. Most of the visitors relate red to aggressiveness and danger. There bright colors usually stand out and grab the attention of the visitor even if they are used in the corners of the web page. Studies have shown that the color influences the buying behavior of the visitor.

Effect of combination:

When the color scheme is considered in a web design, the designer would like to use a combination of two or more colors. When this is the case the colors need to complement each other and be in harmony. There are some combinations that are soothing for the eyes while there are other color combinations that can put off the mind of the visitor.

Conveying message effectively:

Most of the visitors have been habituated to reading black text on a white background. This nature has been attributed to the fact that most of the printed matter we have been reading since childhood has been in black text on white pages. Most of the designers have to stick to lighter background and darker print so that the content becomes legible for the visitor.

Limitation:

Everything is good in limits but what is this limit? When only 2 colors are used the website would seem to hail from the age of black and white movies. This kind of website would neither look very lively nor attractive. On the contrary if more than 5 colors are used the website would look garish and distractions are likely to increase. It is recommended that the designer uses 3 to 5 colors.

Formula for determining the brightness and its use:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has suggested a formula to decide the color brightness. {(Blue value X 114) + (Green value X 587) + (Red value X 299)}/1000. If the difference in brightness between the two colors is more than 125 and the difference between the colors is more than 500, color visibility of good quality is possible.

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