4 Color Mistakes That Amateur Web Designers Make

Thanks to today’s pre-built website templates, you don’t need to be a professional to make a good-looking website. However, when it comes to colors, even the most experienced designers make mistakes.

Color is one of the most difficult web design elements to get right. Using colors correctly isn’t about knowing which colors go well together or having the latest research that says the color blue influences the best response rate. Effectively using colors isn’t about making your website “pop” or even making it look beautiful. Even the most beautiful website is a failure if it doesn’t get people to buy the product.

Colors aren’t an invitation to be clever

Working with colors is about seamlessly blending tints, tones, and shades of the same color to keep people reading. It’s about using color to influence a visitor to take a specific action. Most importantly, it requires putting aside your own personal preferences and choosing colors that achieve the goal.

The truth is, your website should be built for your target market. Just design like a scientist with your target market in mind.

When it comes to choosing your colors, be sure to avoid these mistakes.

Not understanding what “web safe” colors are

Amateur website designers often make the mistake of believing every aspect of website design that applied in the past is now outdated. Including web safe colors. This assumption is incorrect. Using web safe colors isn’t an outdated practice; it’s how you get your visitors to see your colors the same way.

BrightHub defines web safe colors as “colors that are deeply encoded into the browsers and display uniform, consistent and in a non-dithered manner on any computer monitor that supports 8 bit colors and above.”

In other words, you can use all the colors you want, but your visitors won’t necessarily see them the way you’re seeing them. If consistency in color is important to you, stick with web safe colors. There are 216 colors regarded as web safe, and it’s easy to create a color scheme from those options.

If you don’t like the idea of using simple colors, just remember that complex color schemes distract visitors. Don’t be clever, be effective.

Read also: How Color Can Draw Attention to Your Website

Making your background color intense

It’s hard to believe this still happens, but it does. You can always tell when a website has been designed by an amateur when the background color is an intense color that makes your eyes hurt. What’s worse is when an intense color is chosen to match the intense color of someone’s clothes in a photo. People who do this have no idea how cheap it makes their website look, especially when they use a color like purple.

There’s nothing wrong with purple, save for the fact that it’s one of the most difficult colors to incorporate into a design. It’s not that it can’t be done, but people rarely do it right. Purple can be a beautiful color when its tints and shades are correct but it’s distracting on a website.

Unless you’re trying to hypnotize people, you should stay away from purple. That goes for photos, too.

Reas also: 100 Real Color Palettes Inspired by Best-Selling Digital Products

Neutral colors win every time

A neutral color scheme will always be the safest option for any website. Using black, white, grey, and blue will never let you down, as long as you choose the correct shades.

When you’re wearing neutral colors in a website photo, it’s perfectly okay to have a matching theme. When you’re working with black, white, and red, a matching theme can look rather classy. These colors are already web safe as well as aesthetically pleasing and professional.

Read also: Digging into Duotone: How to Create & Use Colorized Images in Web Design

Using photographs that don’t match the website’s color scheme

The most important reason to use a neutral color scheme is to allow yourself the flexibility to publish nearly any photo, stock photo, or art on your website without a severe clash.

When you build a website with a unique color scheme, any photo you post will stick out like a sore thumb. If your theme uses bright pink and you post a photo of a woman wearing a green jacket, that photo will be a distraction for your visitors. Your visitors will experience confusion as well as hesitation. It’s just one more thing to keep your visitors from taking action.

Your photos should never be the reason visitors bounce. Design your website with a neutral color scheme, and you won’t have to worry about your photos getting in the way of your conversions.