Colors influence the consumer’s behavior unconsciously and are one of the most important reasons why he likes or rejects a particular design, and of course, the appropriate color consistency is an integral part of the design.

Therefore, you must understand the basics of colors to know the appropriate combination between them and thus choose the most appropriate mix of colors in different designs, to make the user spend as much time as possible browsing your site.

But before we get into the details of using colors together, we need to go back a little to the origins of colors and know them.

Primary Colors

The primary colors are also called the "Original Colors", or as they are seen as the mother colors, are: red, blue, and yellow.

These colors are used in the production of secondary and sub colors, but it does not mean that they are the primary colors that they are the best, or only that we should use, this is a wrong thought.

For example, orange is one of the sub-colors, but we use it with blue on our site, and it is the primary color for many sites, including HubSpot.


Secondary Colors

secondary colors are formed by combining any two of the primary colors, and this combination results in three colors: orange, purple, and green.

red + yellow = orange

Blue + Red = Violet

Yellow + Blue = Green

But it must be taken into account that the formation of these colors comes only from the use of pure primary colors.

Before digging deeper into the rest of the colors, you must know that the complementary color of the secondary colors is the primary color that was not used to produce this color.

For example, we have previously explained that orange results from mixing red with yellow, and the complementary color to orange is blue, as it is the third color in the primary colors that were not used in the creation of orange.

Therefore, studying and knowing the primary, secondary, and sub colors help to know how to choose the right combination of colors.


Tertiary Colors

Tertiary colors result from mixing the primary colors with the secondary colors, resulting in 6 colors:

red + violet = purple

red + orange = crimson

blue + violet = blue-violet

blue + green = teal (blue-green)

yellow + orange = amber (yellow-orange)

Yellow + green = greenish-yellow or yellowish-green.

Knowing all these colors and their origins is good and useful, but you certainly ask yourself now, when to choose a specific color for the website or when making any design, how can I determine the appropriate colors and degrees or shades for this color?

But since the colors that we mentioned are not all the colors, before answering this question, you must know the different color grades that are used in the different designs of website backgrounds and others.


Color Gradients

The basic color of the website design must be chosen carefully and cautiously, as well as the rest of the backgrounds and other parts to display your ideas and products, so you must know the gradations of the different colors and take them into account when designing the site.


Hue Colors

It is the original or pure state of the color, in which case the color is free of white, black, or gray, and the original colors refer to the basic degrees of primary, secondary, and sub colors.

A pure tone is often used in brand logos, or at least one of the pure colors in the logo is often used with the color of the website's base design.


Shade Colors

Shaded colors or shade of color or "Shade" which means adding black color to the primary or basic color with different shades of black in it.

Very dark shades of color are often used with white backgrounds.


Color Tint

Tint colors are the opposite of shaded colors, where white is added to the base color.

Tint colors are often used in making backgrounds for different designs, with the use of dark text color, whether the text is black or one of the complementary or appropriate colors, which we will talk about in a few seconds.


Color Tone or Saturation

Tones or saturation means adding gray to the original color or adding a mixture of black and white and is often used to refer to shades and tint colors as well.

It does not mean that if the company’s logo is in a certain color that the background of the site is in the same color, so it is possible to use different gradations of the color or other suitable colors for it, and this brings us to the next paragraph, which is choosing the appropriate mix of colors.

Choosing the right color palette

before talking about the right color palette when choosing the website design or any other design, we must always take into consideration that the design must be simple, the simpler and harmonic it was, the better, especially for the eyes.

it doesn't consider relying on cold colors ( like blue, green, or purple) with hot colors (red, orange, and yellow) only, there are a lot of ways to mix colors together.

We must also consider the colors contrast, which is the appearance and clearance of selected colors, the more the difference between selected colors increases, the more contrast between colors, for example, the contrast between dark blue and light blue is less than the contrast between blue and orange (like we use on our site :) )

imagine with me that the website background is blue and the text is light blue, of course, the text won't be clear, which means there's no contrast, that's why we should notice color contrast in designs in general.

we must take into consideration the full form of the design or the website, the design colors must match the other colors selected in the website, and that's why we will share now 7 color distributions or 7 color mix palette uses.

Note that the following distributions are used with different shades of saturated, shaded, and lighter colors.

The use of a monochromatic color system in designs means the use of the same color with the use of saturated, light, and shaded tones of the same color.

Although the use of monochrome lacks color contrast, its use gives the design a clean and polished look, so monochrome colors are often used in graphics or when high contrast is not needed.


Complementary Colors scheme

The complementary system of colors, as shown in the previous image, depends on choosing two colors opposite to each other on the color wheel, where one of the colors is hot and the other cold, such as violet and yellow or green and red.

This system is used in the design of logos and websites, in addition to the use of monochromatic colors with one of its complementary colors, such as the Prime Code logo, so the blue color was used as the cold color with the complementary orange color on the color wheel.

The use of the complementary system from its name means that one of the colors is dominant or primary and the other complements it, instead of using the two colors equally.


Analogous Colors scheme

Another use of the color wheel is analogous which is choosing the shades of colors that lie next to each other on the color wheel, you can select 3 to 5 colors in your palette.

Such as using hot colors from red to yellow or warm colors with spring designs, as well as using shade or cold colors with winter designs and others.

In this case, The colors have less contrast and are used more in a fraction of the different background designs on the site, and are often not used in the entire design.


Square Colors scheme

Square or diamond system, in which four colors are used equally in distance from each other on the color wheel to create a square shape, and the same system can be followed by using 5 colors instead of 4.

Choosing evenly spaced colors provides a proportion of contrast in your design but is not the highest contrast, so it is better to choose one color that is more dominant than the rest of the colors rather than trying to balance the four or five colors.

It is also preferable to experiment with the design using a white and then black background to see which of them suits the design more.

This system is also one of the most popular ways that you might like to start when designing your website. If you choose a specific color, you can choose the rest of the three colors that are equally distributed and use them in their different shades in the interior design of the website.


Rectangle Colors scheme

Also called the "Tetradic Color Scheme" this system also has a choice of four colors, but with it you can choose more contrasting shades from the square or diamond system.

Also, when taking into account the design needs, the basic or dominant color can be chosen with the use of different versions of the rest of the colors or the same basic color to find the most appropriate tones that fit the design.


Triadic Colors scheme

It's very similar to the square system, but you choose three colors that are equally distributed on the color wheel, and those three colors often contain two warm/hot colors and one cold color and vice versa.

A tricolor chart has a high contrast between two of the three colors, so this chart is used more in comparing bar or pie charts.

When using it in designs, it is always preferable to choose a basic color along with muted tones or different tones of the other two colors, rather than trying to balance the three colors.


Split Complementary scheme

This system is very similar to the Complementary system, as it depends on choosing two colors opposite each other on the color wheel, as well as choosing a color close to one of them, such as blue and cyan with orange.

But designs that depend on this system are difficult to balance between the three colors, as designs that follow this system often rely on two basic colors and try to find the right combination of the third color.


Summary

Choosing the right mix of colors in the design of your website or any other design you do does not depend only on the individual sense of design, as the psychological state we are going through directly affects the admiration or rejection of a particular color, so the choice of colors must be on a thoughtful basis.

Also, all of these systems only help to know the colors that go along with or match the main or basic color of your site design. Trying to balance more than two colors requires a lot of attempts to find the most appropriate shades that go together.

Of course, the more degrees used, the more difficult it is to balance them, unlike the fact that one of them is a primary color and the other colors are complementary to it.

Images Sources: Art Space, HubSpot.