Web Design: Tips on Using Color

Of all the choices you make when designing a Web site, one of the most important is the colors you use. Without reading anything on a Web site, simply seeing the colors it uses can tell you a lot about its products and the company behind it.

That is, of course, provided the designers chose colors that would deliver the right message to the site's visitors. In this article I'll talk about color, how to use the color wheel to find color combinations, and I'll introduce you to some tools that can help you choose colors for your Web site.

Back to Grade School

When you were at school you learned that the three primary colors were red, blue and yellow. When you mix these primary colors together, you get what are called secondary colors — mix red and yellow to make orange, mix red and blue to make purple and mix blue and yellow to make green.

Mixing the secondary colors gives you tertiary colors which are yellow-orange, yellow-green, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet and blue-green. The name of each tertiary color is derived from the colors that are mixed to make it, with the primary color first.

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