When you see a website that is beautiful, you just know it. It sparks emotion and most of the time it is really hard to put your finger on exactly why.

If we dig a little into color, wanted to share a couple of ideas for starting points for your next project.

Science plus Psychology

Colors have meanings that create strong emotions as seen in the Wheel of Emotions.

Red creates urgency and increases heart rate. This color is often associated with fast food. Pricing is often displayed as deep red.

People trust blue links. Eric Graham saw a 36.3% increase in click-through rate when making links blue while underlining them.

Research from Joe Hallock shows color preferences by gender and age. Men and women respond similarly to their color preferences. Blue is the favorite color among men and women. Women dislike brown and orange. Men dislike brown and purple.

Two studies, one measuring the aesthetic response to color combinations and the other looking at consumer preferences, also find that while a large majority of consumers prefer color patterns with similar hues, they favor palettes with a highly contrasting accent color.

Trends are important. Based on this article, the color of 2019 is #FF6F61 and looks like this. Seasonal colors also have an important role to play.

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Choosing your colors

Here are some examples of great color schemes: Canva.com, Visme.co, DesignModo.com, and DailyEgg.com.  When in doubt, think of brands that you admire and borrow.

Pick three colors: 60% dominant color. 30% – secondary color. 10% accent color. A button on a website (“call to action”) is an example or an accent color. Unbounce believes the future of call-to-action buttons is the Big Orange Button. Keep in mind that while some sites will make claims, it is always good to test their findings for yourself.

If you need a little help deciding on a primary color, you may want to take this quiz from Grasshopper. You could also use these tools to help you decide: coolors.co, colormind.io, canva.com color palette generator, paletton.com.