What colors do I choose for my website?

Designing a new website can be stressful. There are so many questions to ask yourself. 

Should you use WordPress? What about Joomla or Drupal? Where should my logo go? Should I have an About Me menu item, or does that look too self-absorbed? … The list goes on and on.

One question we commonly get asked is, “what colors should I use?”

This is a great question and depends on many factors, such as:

1. The colors of your logo – if you have one
2. Who your target audience is and what you want to relate to them through your website and marketing
3. The overall feel you want people to have while they are on your website

Although there is no right or wrong answer in my opinion, there are some basic guidelines you can use.

Here are the common associations to colors in Western culture:

Red: Passion, Anger, Vigor, Love, Danger
Yellow: Knowledge, Energy, Joy, Intellect, Youth
Green: Fertility, Wealth, Healing, Success, Growth
White: Purity, Healing, Perfection, Clean, Virtue (you wouldn’t be able to read it if the font color was changed)
Blue: Knowledge, Trust, Tranquility, Calm, Peace, Cool
Black: Fear, Secrecy, Formal, Luxury
Purple: Royalty, Wisdom, Spirituality, Imagination
Orange: Creativity, Invigoration, Unique, Stimulation
Gray: Balance, Sophistication, Neutrality, Uncommitted

I personally spend so much time working on the websites of other businesses that I rarely take the time to work on my own. Ah, the case of the cobbler whose children have no shoes… perhaps it’s time for a change.