Colour Palettes: Neutral and complementary

Colour Palettes: Neutral and complementary

Understanding colour psychology is a crucial aspect of creating a colour palette that works well in website design. While some designers sometimes thought of colour as a purely aesthetic choice, it is a key component of the psychological impact on web users.

A well-thought-out out colour palette can elevate a design from “good” to “great.

Neutral and complementary colour scheme

Neutral colours contain equal parts of each of the three primary colours: red, blue and yellow.

Neutral colours often stand alone as the primary focus of the design; for example, the use of a white background with black text is often seen in publications and Web design.

The use of brown shades conveys the sense of organic beauty, making it look like an untouched brand. The rustic colour choices bring out the vintage look. Neutral colours also make good backgrounds and serve to unify diverse colour palettes.

Know What Colours Mean

Colours have different psychologies. Colour psychology helps make informed design decisions within the colour palette of your website.

You should target the demographic most interested in visiting your website and think about what colours are likely to engage with them. Acquiring data on the age group, gender and location of your website visitors can help determine which colour palette to use. 

Colours create brand recognition.

Your site is essentially your company’s home online. That means it needs to be memorable enough that users will return after their first visit. Fortunately, colour increases brand recognition by 80%. If your company already has an established colour scheme, it’s essential to include this in your site’s design. This will make it easy for visitors to connect with you in other places they’ve seen your brand.

Use Colour to Drive Conversions

The goal of your website is grabbing the user’s attention without doing so in a jarring way. The idea is to get a feel for the basic colour schemes that seem to attract the type of market you’re going for. You can add complementary tones in your background and other accents on the page; complementary colours work well to highlight featured information. The human eye needs a break from the same colour, so it seeks another pattern.

The 60-30-10 Rule

The 60-30-10 Rule is a theory for creating colour palettes that are well-balanced and visually interesting. The idea is that one colour makes up 60% of the palette; another complementary colour makes up 30% of the palette and then a third colour is used as an accent for the remaining 10% of the design.

This method makes it much easier for designers to start experimenting with unconventional colour palettes without stepping outside the expected norms within an industry or brand.

If your website isn’t converting the way you’d like, it may be because your designs need to be taken up a notch or two. Complementary colours are just one way of making an impact on site visitors and give your company an extra edge.

The combination of neutral or complementary colours on your site impacts how people feel when they land on your page.