How to Choose Your Color Schemes

It’s vital to know what color schemes you should use in your designs. But, to understand which ones you have to use, you’ll need to check out colors referring to your industry. Thus, I’ll focus on how you can make good color schemes. That is to say, what steps you have to follow. Ready?

1. Pick a primary color

Based on the colors that work well for your business that I explained in the previous section, it’s time you choose the primary or dominant color of your designs. This will be the color your audience will identify as your brand color.

It’s utterly important that you select this color wisely, and you use it accordingly. If you make a mistake here, like choosing purple for a fast-food brand, you might have problems to sell your products and/or people identifying your brand as what it is.

Indeed, your primary color should also form part of your logo. When people think about your brand and what you sell, they should think about this color. So, it’s pivotal you come up with a good option.

Apart from the colors that work best for each industry, remember to take into account your audience and their preferences as most people base their buying decisions on colors.

2. Determine your color schemes

Once you have your primary color clear, it’s high time you decide on what accent color/s you are going to use. It’s not necessary to use many colors to create an awesome color scheme. Remember the 60-30-10 rule. 

Most of the time, it’s better to use a simple combination. You can always use different shades and tints if you want to be more creative.

Do not forget that your accent color/s are the ones you use to highlight the relevant information. For example, sidebars, headings, captions, buttons, etc.

3. Choose your background

Selecting your background color is an important decision too. This is the color that has to contrast with your primary color. They must fit well together. 

Contrary to what many people believe, the background color is not there just to calm down viewers because too much of the primary color could be annoying.

But, your background color is there as it matches well with what you want to say. It’s there to highlight important information and make it easier for your target audience to understand what is relevant.

You can either decide to use a light or a dark background. Still, choosing the right background color matters as it will have to create harmony between your dominant and accent colors. And, at the same time, create a good atmosphere.

Important note:

Light background vs. dark background.

Sometimes it is better to use a light background. This is because the aim of the background color is to make the rest of the content readable and more visible.

But, if what you want to do is to show you’ve got a powerful brand identity, then you should use a dark background. Indeed, it would be great to use different shades of your brand color.

4. Wireframe your design

Wireframes show where things go in a design without giving too many details. They represent a general idea of what the final project intends to be.

Wireframing is great as it saves time and money. It’s an easy way to share ideas before the project is finished. It also gives you the chance to try different possibilities.

The main drawback of wireframes is that they can’t show how colors contrast content, nor do they show you the impact of brand design. Yet, they are useful to get an idea of how your design will look like in terms of form or what goes where.

5. Play with some different color schemes

The same as you would’ve played with wireframes to check what looks better where you will need to play with some different color schemes once the rest is ready.

It is advisable to test how each color scheme works in different scenarios. For instance, imagine you want to create printed ads, will this color scheme work well? You should also check how it is perceived by your audience. Does it have the effect you thought it would have?

If you have more than one option and you test them, you can always go for the most effective one. But, if you decide on one without having tested any other, you would never know whether you could have selected a better choice.