One facet of a well designed website is its colours. colour selection is vital in creating the look that the site's owner wants to portray. if the look of the site doesn't meet the users expectations, then they'll leave & probably won't return to the website. This is often the reason why a site is not as successful as it should be.

Knowing about colour perception can make your life easier when choosing a colour scheme for a website. knowing the colours that can irritate and which can calm is important in giving the user the right impression and experience of the site. why would you want to annoy a user when you want them to buy from your site?

Colour balance and contrast is another good technique. It can be used to direct users to specific pages on the website.

Below are some of the best-known colours & their emotional connotations.

Yellow can be linked with danger, hope, friendliness and finances. used sparingly, it can be used to draw attention to sections of a webpage.

Green is an effective colour to use to create a calm & relaxed website, its associated with nature, envy, money and the organic.

Blue is linked to corporate, strength, water and harmony and the lighter blues can be used in designing web sites to create a cool effect.

The colour black can be linked to death, mourning, power and style. many heavy metal bands use black as their predominant colour due to its associations with death and evil.

Yellow conjures up visions of summer, joy and optimism. it's a colour that can be overwhelming and if used in conjunction with black, it creates a feeling of warning.

Like yellow, red is a colour that is associated with love, sex and energy. it too can be over powering if over used, although its excellent to attract attention.

Like green, brown is linked to mother earth, calm and relaxation. there is a trend to use wood textures as a background colour to give the feel of the environment & organics.

Light grey is usually used to create shiny gradient effects in design. The colour might be linked to sophistication, stability and boredom.

In web design, purple is not used very often, probably because it is seen as a feminine colour. it's also associated with royalty, romance & wisdom.

Grey can be an odd colour because it isn't strong. it can be used to make sophisticated, classy & calm web sites. it's used a lot on tech web sites.

Knowing more about the psychology of colour could give web designers the upper hand when you're designing a client site. simply knowing what colours create what effect can make a website successful. there is nothing worse than creating a great-looking site but does not connect with the end user. using colour cleverly to create feeling, contrast and balance can change a rubbish website into a great one.