No two WebDVM websites are the same. Our customizable templates allow us create unique websites that represent each practice’s personality. With WebDVM, your website will tell visitors what your practice is about and why they should choose you!
One of the first decisions you’ll have to make for your new website is what the color scheme will be. From the text and navigation to the background and icons, your color scheme will be a dominant factor in what your website looks like and what impression it makes on your visitors.
For some people, the task of choosing a color scheme can seem daunting. While most of us can easily identify what a good color scheme looks like, actually creating your own can be surprisingly challenging. Whether you’re just starting to decide on your website color scheme or you’ve been struggling to pick exactly the right color scheme for a while, stick around. This blog post is for you!
How Many Colors Should You Use?
First things first, before you start picking every color in the rainbow, let’s establish how many colors your color scheme should include. When it comes to WebDVM websites, a good rule of thumb is to pick three colors: one main color and two complementary colors. If you simply can’t contain yourself to three colors, and want to include a fourth, our talented designers can accommodate you, but as a general rule, three is ideal.
If you’ve decided to select a large image for the background of your website, try to choose one that matches your color scheme, or that uses very light neutral colors (i.e., grey or white) to complement your colors.
Using Your Logo to Create a Color Scheme
In many cases, choosing a color scheme for your practice will be as easy as using the colors in your practice logo. A lot of practices use their logo to create a color scheme. It’s a great way to establish cohesion between your practice, your website and your social media accounts, and to reinforce your brand.
To provide the LifeLearn team with your exact logo colors, you can ask the designer of your logo to provide you with the hexadecimal (hex) codes for the colors. A hex code is a six digit number used in HTML and CSS to represent colors. An example of a hex code would be #FFFFFF for white or #2D9BC7 for the color of this hyperlink.
If, for some reason, you can’t get the hex codes from the designer, there are other ways to retrieve the hex codes of your logo colors. Open your logo in an image editor program, such as Photoshop (Paint won’t work in this case), use the eye dropper tool to select the colors, and then copy the hex code.
You can also download an eye dropper tool if you use Chrome or Firefox, and open your logo in your browser to determine the colors. If all else fails, send your logo our way, and our designers can determine what the hex codes of your colors are.
Creating A Color Scheme
For some practices, using your logo as a color scheme may not be an option. Maybe you don’t have a logo yet, or your logo is a single color or too many colors, or your logo is in greyscale (which doesn’t make a good color scheme for a website). Whatever the reason, if simply using your logo colors isn’t an option, there are some other methods you can use to create an awesome color scheme for your website:
Using Adobe Kuler and Dribbble
Adobe Kuler helps designers create attractive color schemes, and it can help you too. If you have one color in mind, either from your logo or elsewhere, open Adobe Kuler and make the first square that color. Then, in the top left hand corner, choose from one of the different color rules, including analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary, compound, or shades. You may still want to play around with the colors, but these different color rules can give you a good starting point for creating a cohesive color scheme.
One of the beautiful things about Adobe Kuler is that if you don’t have any definitive color choices yet, you can take advantage of a color scheme someone else has already created. At the top left, switch from “Create” to “Explore” to see what color schemes other users have come up with. You can view all the schemes or to narrow things down a little, you can sort by Most Popular, Most Used, and Random.
Another online design tool that can help you pick a color scheme is Dribbble. In Dribbble, the colors used in every design piece are listed next to it. So if you find an image on Dribbble that really stands out to you or that you really like the colors for, just click on that image to expand it, and hover over the color palette to get the hex codes of each individual color.
Picking from a picture
And speaking of getting colors from images, you don’t need to use a design website like Dribble to select colors from an image you like. If you have a photo in mind that you like the colors of, or that evokes the kind of emotions that you want your visitors to feel, you could pick colors from that image by using an eye dropper tool and Adobe Kuler. For example, we pulled two colors (and three shades of those same colors) from this image to create a basic but attractive color scheme that hopefully suggests calm and relaxation to the viewer.Don’t be afraid to play around with the eye dropper either. The first colors you pull from the photo might not work perfectly together, but with a little bit of experimentation, you should be able to easily create an inviting color scheme.
Choosing Colors Based on Meaning
Another way to create a color scheme is to consider what different colors mean. Certain colors may mean specific things to people. So when you’re choosing a color scheme, take into consideration your practice’s brand and personality and what values and emotions you want people to associate with your practice. Then create a color scheme using colors that represent those emotions/values:
- Red – passion, energy, boldness, youth, joy, excitement
- Orange – fun, friendliness, vitality, warmth, exuberance, confidence
- Yellow – warmth, optimism, happiness, creativity, light
- Green – nature, peace, calm, serenity, health
- Blue – serenity, calm, truth, freedom, patience, strength, trust
- Purple – sophistication, wealth, intelligence, creativity, wisdom
- Pink – youth, love, sweetness, fun
Choosing a color scheme might feel challenging or overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! Use these tips to play around with color and figure out the right scheme for your practice. You may even find that you have fun!
