Choosing a Color Scheme

When designing a brand or website, it’s important to choose a color scheme that grabs peoples attention and is accessible to all your users.

Here are some things to think about when choosing a color palette:

Choose unique colors

Look up other businesses in your market, and find a color scheme that none of them are using. Instead of trying to fit in, make sure your brand stands out.

Make it accessible

Make sure you choose a color scheme that’s high contrast for people with different kinds of color blindness. You can find lots of color wheels online for each type of color blindness.

Choose printable colors

There are some colors that aren’t printable on normal CMYK printers, which include orange and purple. I’m definitely not saying you can’t use these colors, but make sure you consider how your color scheme looks when you print it.

Choose one main color

Whenever I visit a website with lots of different colors, it seems disorganized and distracting. In general, I try to stick with one main color and one accent color, and I try to use the accent color sparingly.

Look up color association

People associate certain emotions with certain colors - make sure you choose colors that convey your brand well. You can view more information on color associations here.

Choose complementing colors

A great resource I use for making a color scheme is coolors.co, an online app that generates color schemes with the press of a button.