Color is the most important aspect of UI design that helps you design an engaging user interface. There is a lot to color, and we don’t usually take time to go through the theory part, but if we do and we understand the right context, colors can add a lot of value to web products.
Why colors are important
We are talking on and on about how colors impact your web design and improve user experience but now we will discuss why?
Colors, if used properly, will reflect the personality of your brand. You want to use the right colors to attract the right users as specific moods and feelings can be evoked using the right colors. The right use of colors also makes a website or application more put together and just natural.
Research conducted by the Institute for Color shows that users take about 90 seconds to assess the quality of online products. From 62% to 90% of all product assessments that people make are color-influenced on the subconscious level. It then follows that choosing the correct colors for your logo, brand, and product packaging should never be done on a whim.
So, color can also influence a person’s purchasing decision and for any marketing strategy online UI design is an essential part. Therefore, you have to decide very carefully what colors you want to use.
The 60 30 10 Rule
The 60–30–10 is a classic decor rule that helps create a color palette for a space. It states that
- 60% of the room should be a dominant color,
- 30% should be the secondary color or texture and
- the last 10% should be an accent.
Emotions associated with colors
Colors can bring certain emotions in people and many famous brands take advantage of this. They design their brand around certain colors to evoke a certain emotion from their customers.
Warm Colors
On the color wheel, red, orange, and yellow are the warm colors.
- Red is associated with strong emotions like passion and love. It also represents anger and hostility to some. Red is the universal color to signify strength, power, courage, and danger.
- Orange is a color of warmth and happiness and can inspire enthusiasm, optimism, and self-confidence in people. Therefore, it is used by a lot of companies like Fanta, Gulf Oil, Harley-Davidson, MasterCard, Nickelodeon, etc.
- Yellow color can be used to trigger passion in customers because yellow is associated with the sun. Other than passion, this color can also trigger happiness and is often used to grab people’s attention, as yellow is the color of mind and intellect. It is also said to bring feelings of cheerfulness.
Cold Colors
The cold colors are:
- Blue
- Green
- Indigo
- Violet
Blue is maybe everyone’s favorite color. In a survey by academic researcher Joe Hallock, only 232 people participated, and in this survey, blue was the favorite color of 42 percent of respondents, most of which are American.
Blue color signifies trust, security, and reliability. Many technology brands like Skype, IBM, Dell, HP, Intel, etc., use blue color for branding to help to increase people’s trust in the company.
The green color is everywhere, like blue, and it brings calm feelings. This color evokes a sense of growth and happiness. Green represents generosity, success, harmony, health, renewal, and sustainability. Many brands like Spotify, Tropicana, Subway, WhatsApp, etc.
Black is used by many high-end luxury brands and it is a symbol of elegance. The black color also signifies mystery. Therefore, brands like Mercedes have created a website with just black, grey, and white. Other than Mercedes, high-end brands like Chanel, Gucci, Parada, Apple, etc. also use black.
White usually brings elegance and simplicity to the design. Most high-end brands use black on white or white on black for their logos like Chanel, Dior, and Parada.
Purple commonly brings about thoughts of wealth and royalty. So, purple color has been given the status of elite color. This color is also associated with magic and mystery as well as creativity, fun, and imagination.
