15 Best Resources for Website Colors
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Website colors are hugely important in the impact of your site, which in turn can drive how your audience sees you, their willingness to hire you or buy from you, and therefore the overall revenue of your business. And it’s not just a case of making your website look pretty: color has a much deeper role than that.
It only takes a fraction of a second for a visitor to form an impression about your website, and by extension, the credibility of your work.
And studies show, design is a major factor in either establishing trust, or undermining it.
Guiding my website clients toward colors that are not just beautiful, but also effective, is one of my favorite parts of a custom website project. But not everyone enjoys choosing colors, and not many people feel truly confident in selecting a website palette.
Here are 15 of my tried and trusted resources to help you.
My favorite color strategy expert
Before you jump into choosing website colors, you should spend time on your overall brand strategy.
Among many other things, this means figuring out what you stand for, what sets you apart from others in your field, and how you want your audience, reader, or potential client to feel when they come across you.
There is nobody I know who does a better job of this topic than Fiona Humberstone.
1) Start with this article: the absolute essentials of colour psychology for brand design
2) And I strongly recommend Fiona’s book, Style Your Brand
Special note for authors: hopefully, if you worked with a professional book cover designer, they will have considered key elements of your author branding in the design they produced. If you don’t love your book cover, or if your book’s not selling well, or if you hired a website designer like me but asked not to use your book colors in your website design, these could all be signs that you’ve got a color branding problem. You might like to book a paid consulting hour with me if you want specific advice on your author brand colors.
Best practice for website colors
3) My introduction and overview: How to choose website colors
4) Example project with examples, for one of my clients: Choosing Website Colors Case Study
5) Make sure there is enough contrast in your intended color palette with the Color Contrast Checker from Coolors
Deep dive into color psychology for websites
6) I offer this resource bundle of training and done-for-you color schemes for just $27
Color Psychology Masterclass (video)
Quickstart Guide to Choosing Your Website Colors (video)
40 Done for You Website Color Schemes (swipe file)
For color inspiration, palette ideas, and experiments
7) See my roundup of 12 Done For You Website Color Schemes
8) Color Hunt : a good starting point for palettes, however, remember that many of these won’t have a contrasting color, which you need for a good, readable website
9) Color Hex : excellent for seeing tints and shades of your starting color
10) Eye Dropper : a handy Chrome plugin that allows you to pick colors that you like from web pages
11) Tin Eye : to upload your image and get the color codes that are contained in it
Example: Tin Eye color extraction from an image
For storing your color palette
Don’t guess at your brand colors! Once you’ve chosen them, use your exact color codes everywhere.
There are lots of ways you can store your color codes for handy reference in tools that you already use. For example:
Canva’s pro plan allows you to save your brand colors
ConvertKit now allows you to store your up to 5 brand colors for use throughout your email marketing (learn more here)
Squarespace keeps your website design consistent by requiring you to commit to 5 main colors (learn more here)
> Save 10% off your first subscription of a Squarespace website by using the code PAULINE10
Related: 7 ways Squarespace helps you stay consistent
12) And personally, I love Palettte as a handy place to save and work on color palettes for my clients
For photos that coordinate
You’ll undo your great work with website colors if you use photos that don’t complement your overall branding. If you work with a professional photographer, make sure to communicate your brand palette as part of the project brief. Otherwise, stock image sites that include a color search include:
13) Pixabay : after searching for your photo, you can narrow the results using a limited range of color options
14) Pexels : run your photo search, then narrow the search using either suggested colors, or your own hex code. Here’s an example of my search for “book”, with soft greyish tones:
Would you like a website color workshop for your group?
15) I offer workshops and presentations to professional groups including image consultants, interior designers, life coaches, and authors on how to use color on your website to drive bottom-line business results.
For more information and to plan a workshop for your group, visit my speaking page.
Website colors are crucial!
For most human visitors, color is one of the first things they’ll notice about your website. The right colors can make or break that split-second impression they’ll form of your work.
Choosing website colors can be really fun, but it can be daunting, too. I hope you find these resources useful to explore and narrow down your choices.
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Other resources for a website that drives profit
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