Ever been to a website that is barely readable because of the bad color design? Well here's some tips to make sure that you don't fall into the same trap.

* Black text on a white background, while not exciting, is the most practical color combination.

* Try and not use more then four colors on your website, too many can be disorientating for the user.

* Find out what each color represents to the users mind. For example green represents wealth while red represents daring.

* Don't use yellow for web page backgrounds.

* Take a look at Visibone or get any number of color charts that are avialble on the internet if you cannot create a suitable combination yourself.

* I've found the best color combinations to be monocrome. Which means multiple shades of the same color. NOTE: make sure there is contrast between the colors, or else the text will be diffecult to read.

Hope thats helpful

yeh this is really usefull. i have used monochrome on my most recently wesite. it came out really good. its all shades of blue. the site is www.harryly.cjb.com. i have to move it to a this astahost which is way better than the free one i got now. recently got the package so i be moving soon!

Another nice background would be an image showing a gradient. You can make it small enough (say 800x5 pixels) and fill it from light-blue to white.
Then just use it as background image.

So for colorscheme, would this be acceptable

Lindy Farms of CT

I'm working on the framwork for this site and it will be using, css, php and mySQL when done. Right now I'm just working on the color schemes and layout of the site. 3 column, with header footer and no frames unless used for data that belongs in frames.

Right now I'm testing the footer, It's supposed to stay glued to the bottom of the screen in the page is short like now. I'm having some trouble with the code when the footer is glued to the bottom, the center context have a small hole in the bottom left hand side. As soon as I figure out what I forgot it should work...

The menu on the left side will be content driven using mySQL to populate thae data. Now it's just there as a place holder to see what it would look like.

I have a yellow line in the left column, right under the text... I have to figure out where that comes from (It must be in my css file)

Any opinion on this color scheme?

Nils

one way to expose yourself to suitable colour combinations that established companies and people use on the internet is to surf around and keep an eye out for popular sites. you can be sure one of the reasons why they're popular is because of the colour combination they use - pleasant and comfortable to the eye and not at all jarring or blinding.

take note of the colour combinations they use and you'll soon be familiar with colours that can be put together to enhance your site and colours that will turn people away from your site.

on my site i use a purple/ black color combination.There are different shades of purple in the banner image, and the background is black, with a sort of a smoky purple iframe. The font color is black.

It's not really an interesting layout, though ,so i'm thinking of making a different layout, maybe one with more graphics..

If anyone needs more information try using colorimpact or similar programs.

I use a variety of colors for my different sites, but a black background paired with a bright color for text helps make my pages really stand out

And don't forget that any colours you use should be from the 216 web-safe colour palette, otherwise some colours would look different on different systems and browsers. I use the one in Photoshop, but there are websites like webmonkey.com that show the web-safe palette.

Also, when you have a page that has white backgrounds, and coloured backgrounds (maybe the menu), make sure that the active link, unvisited link and visited link colours don't blend into either of the backgrounds. CSS gets around this easily, but always a good thing to keep in mind.

Not only that, but when making your website with coordinated colors, your best bet is to go with complementary colors. They look good together and create a stunning contrast. The best way to find complementary colors is look at a color wheel. The color directly across from it is its complementary color!

Basic Complementary Colors:
Red=Green
Purple=Yellow
Blue=Orange

This post has been edited by mpinsky: Jun 15 2006, 03:24 PM