Choose Colors for Your Website that Define You

The colors you choose for your church, non-profit, or small business website say a lot about you, your client, or the products you or your client are trying to sell. But more importantly, they also create an emotional response in every one of your visitors, good or bad. Whether we realize it or not, throughout our life we’ve associated different colors with different emotions, and so have your visitors.There are two basic associations everyone makes in their mind regarding colors: natural and psychological. Natural: Nature is the source of our most basic associations with color. Take a drive through the country and you’re likely to encounter bright blue skies, rich green fields, tall brown trees, rocky grey mountains, blazing red fire, or any one of a thousand different colors found in nature. Each of these colors will create some type of emotion in you. Psychological: Throughout our lifetime, we’ve all had experiences that have shaped who we are and the way we think. Often, these experiences have a color that your mind has associated with it. If the experience was good, you probably like the color. If the experience was bad, you probably don’t. For example, if you visited your grandparent’s bright yellow house countless times as a child and it was always a wonderful experience, you probably get warm, fuzzy feelings every time you see a building painted yellow. But, if your grandparents were mean, cranky old people who smelled bad and ate disgusting food, you’re probably reminded of those negative feelings when you’re around yellow buildings. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to predict your visitors personal psychological associations to different colors. However you can, to some extent, predict their cultural psychological associations to colors. For example, the most famous three colors in the United States are red, white, and blue. Therefore, if your site is designed with these three colors, you’re probably going to get a patriotic response from your visitors…which is probably good, but might not be. The explanations below are meant to be guidelines for you to use when picking your colors. They are not, of course, guarantees of what your visitors will feel when visiting your site. Use them as a starting point, along with your own feelings, to determine the best color scheme for your project. Green Green is the color most often associated with nature. Green is a symbol of tranquility, abundance, growth and safety. Darker green is mostly associated with wealth and money. Yellow Yellow is the color of sunshine making it a cheerful and bright color associated with joy, happiness and friendliness. Yellow exudes warmth and optimism. Orange Orange is the color of fall. It is a fun, warm color stimulating energy, creativity and activity. It suggests pleasure, cheer, excitement, strength and ambition. Red Red demands the most attention. It symbolizes love, power, passion, rage, courage, danger, urgency, strength and excitement. Violet Violet signifies deep passion, wealth and nobility. It suggests sophistication, intelligence, dignity, spirituality, power and stability. Blue Blue is the color of the sea and sky. Blue suggests truth, dignity, trust, reliability, wisdom and loyalty. Black Black is associated with power, formality, mystery & death. It is considered to be formal, elegant and prestigious and suggests authority, boldness and seriousness. White White is the color of snow. It is associated with purity, cleanliness, lightness, safety, simplicity and youth. Gray Gray is a neutral color. It suggests authority, practicality and earnestness. Gray can be associated with science, architecture and commerce. Brown Brown is the color of the earth. It suggests richness, politeness, helpfulness and effectiveness.