Learn how to use color effectively in your designs

Whether you’re defusing a ticking time bomb, or trying to design a decent-looking site, if you choose the wrong color—you’re doomed. Okay, so the wrong color selection for a client’s site is unlikely to be the death of you, but it could curtail your budding career as a web designer. Choosing colors is no simple matter. There are aesthetic, identity, and usability considerations to take into account. And, to make matters worse, most modern displays can render millions of colors. That’s a huge number of horrible color combinations just waiting to happen!

Fortunately, there’s no need to be a swatchbook-carrying color consultant to make good color choices. A wealth of knowledge is available, from psychological guidelines to tried-and-true color theories that will help you make the right choices with your palette.

In Chapter 2 of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, 3rd Edition, you'll learn all about color. You'll learn about the psychology of color associations, then move on to color theory, learning about the diffferences between the RGB and CMYK color models:

You'll move on to learn about how to pick your own palettes from the color wheel, moving beyond simple complementary colors, using  color schemes like the triadic palette:

The chapter concludes with a real-world example: choosing a color scheme for an example site.

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Until next time,
James at SitePoint