20 colour tips for website design

Choosing the right colours when designing a website is something that requires a lot of patience and experimentation, and – ideally – a minimum of guesswork.

Thankfully there are some useful rules of thumb to follow when it comes to working with colours, as well as some truly excellent sources of inspiration out there to help you make the right colour choices for your brand, website, and audience.

Let's start off by considering why colour matters, then I’ll list 20 colour recommendations for web professionals, followed by some pointers to my favourite tools at the end of this article.

Why is colour so important?

Psychologists have for many years studied the effects of colour on the brain / emotions. There don't seem to be any absolutes truths here. People’s perception of colour is largely subjective so I don’t think we can be too instructive in this area. Red doesn’t always mean danger, and blue doesn’t always mean calm.

Yellow is pretty much bi-polar, as far as I can tell. Somebody I used to work with once told me that it was ‘the colour of suicide’ and steadfastly refused to have our office painted yellow. Yet it is also said that yellow conveys optimism, confidence and emotional strength. So which is it?

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