Whether you’re just starting your site or are revamping your site’s look, having a clean and cohesive color palette is so important to having a polished online presence. Having too many colors, colors that clash, and even too few colors can make your site look sloppy or unfinished. Read on for my design tips to help you find the color palette that’s right for your website!
1. Find your vibe
Before you start thinking of colors, you should have a sense of the vibe you want your site to communicate with visitors. Say you have a travel blog: if you want your site to read as young and carefree, you might pick lighter colors; if you want it to read as more sophisticated, you might pick bolder and richer hues. Having a clear idea of your vibe will help you pick out your colors!
Hint: If you have some images picked out already, take a look at the tones in those images. Are they cool or warm? High or low saturation? You’ll want your site colors to work together with your images, so they can offer some guidance if you’re not sure where to start.
2. Start with one
Now that you know how your want your site to come across, it’s time to pick just one color. Those images from my hint above? If you don’t have any yet, it’s time to grab even just one image that represents the vibe you’re going for. Then, using a tool like Canva or Photoshop, use the color selector to pick out a color from that image. Both tools will give you the hex code for the color you’ve picked. Here’s an example of how to do this in Photoshop:
3. Use some science
Believe it or not, there is a science behind colors and how they relate to one another. Leveraging science to help you pick your colors will guide you towards a color palette that is clean and cohesive.
My #1 favorite resource for this is Session College’s color selector. Once you have your color from step 2, simply copy/paste the hex code into step one of the color selector. Then, pick the color harmony you want. It will generate options for you based on the harmony you’ve selected! As you figure out what other colors you want, you can add more to step 1 so the harmony will select colors based on the relationship to all the colors in step 1.
Hint: Don’t be afraid to play around with the hue. For example, if it suggests a pastel green you really don’t love or that doesn’t quite go with your vibe, maybe play around on the color wheel and find a darker green. Remember, the color selector is there to help offer suggestion and guidance — you don’t have to stick with it’s exact outputs if they aren’t right for you!
4. Know when to stop
With these tools supporting you, it can be easy to pick out tons of different colors that look good together. But, just because they work well as a group doesn’t mean they won’t be overwhelming on your website. Remember, your site will also have text and images, so the colors you pick are really there to support your content.
Hint: 2-3 colors, plus black and white, is usually the design sweet spot.
That’s it! You’re ready to start picking out the color palette that will help you put together a cohesive website! Need to revamp your whole look, not just your colors? Our WordPress themes will get you the look of a bespoke designer site.
