Color Schemes

Color Schemes are one of the most important aspects of a good graphic design. They will make people fall in love with your website or absolutely hate it. Most people tend to think of colors as art and putting colors into schemes takes an artist. However, there is actually a science to help the less artistic people like myself, called Color Theory. I won’t get into much detail about the values, hues, or saturation of colors, but I will explain a few of the most dominant color schemes. After reading this tutorial, experimenting with the color schemes is an excellent idea.

Color Combinations

It should go without being said, but just because we have color doesn’t mean that everything needs to have it. However, black and white websites that aren’t intended for some old fashion business lack creativity and often push people away from the website. When I say going overboard with color, I mean either using too many colors or coloring too much, both of which can break a design. Color Theory has given us quite a few schemes or ideas to blend our colors into our web pages, but I don’t want to overload you with all of them. So, we will discuss three primary color combinations.

Monochromatic Color

The monochromatic color scheme involves one color with different tints. This is a great color scheme for showing depth and drawing focus to certain elements.

Analogous Color

The analogous color scheme involves various colors that are in very close proximity to one another. This is somewhat close to the monochromatic color scheme except for instead of the tint and saturation changing, it is the color that is changing. The analogous colors often can portray feelings like hot or cold because of the color combination.

Complementary Color

The complementary color scheme is a composition of opposing colors on the color wheel. Complementary colors provide the highest contrast out of all of the schemes listed here. They have excellent contrast and compliment each other very well. Each color is much more intense than when the color displayed on a white background. For instance, red with green makes red seem even redder.

Well, that concludes the three primary color schemes that I am prepared to talk about. Feel free to get behind the canvas and start painting up some awesome color combinations on your website.