Colors for Your Website

Oh Yes ..Colors! There are hot ones, cool ones, earthy
colors, spiritual colors and every other shade in the
rainbow! What colors should you use for your website?

Though color combinations that would work for many
decorating ideas are pleasing to the eye, it doesn't
mean they will work on the web.

The reason is that the combinations you use have
to serve a twofold purpose: They should impart a
general theme to your website and, more
importantly, make it easy for your visitors to
see and read.

The very high contrast between white and black,
having opposite locations on the chromatic scale,
is good for standard paper books but not for the
Web! A good choice of colors as a tool in the
distribution of information, is something that
should be given serious consideration.

The printed media's classical scheme of black lettering
over a white background doesn't work well for Web
content. Certain colors produced by the glowing phosphor
of PC monitors are very intense and tend to assault the
eyes with their potency, such as when you look at snow
in bright sunshine.

The above reason is why many folks will print an
eBook to study it: They can't take the "white
assault" from most monitors.

Application programmers and savvy web designers
are discovering this harmful quality of monitors and
are compensating by making the backgrounds of their
websites an off white/gray.

You can try this for yourself: read a page with
an absolute white background and then the same
page with a very light gray or pastel background.
See the difference?

The general look and color combination of your website
should be pleasing and related to the interests of your
visitors however, the areas devoted to text should not
strain their eyes. As an example, I was at a hardware
forum and somebody had written a couple of bright
fluorescent orange lines on a medium gray background;
it was about all I could take! Just looking at the
2 lines of text to read them was painful.

Another example of a bad choice for body copy is a
dark font over a dark background because it overtaxes
the eyes to make out the text. The same reason absolute
white is harmful applies to white lettering over a black
background.

White without a small amount of compensating
color is very stressful on the eyes. If you ever
spend any time at a website that causes such
irritation, you'll lose focus and get tired on
account of the strain of reading.

All the elements of your website decoration should
conspire to make the visit a pleasant one for your
customers. Designing and building a successful website
should take into consideration all the design elements to
keep from physically irritating your visitors.

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by Francisco Aloy

(C)2004 Francisco Aloy
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