Before you can consider the finer points of your blog’s layout and design, you need to make a big decisions. There are few decisions that are more important than the colour scheme your blog is going to use.
Pay Attention To Contrast
You need to pick colours that provide enough contrast to make your text stand out in order to promote readability. Stay away from using a light coloured font on a light colour background as it would be very difficult to read. Remember your emphasis is on getting your blog post read because an unread post is a useless waste of space and time.
Not Too Many Colours
You should choose 3 or 4 colours for your blog, and use only those colours, or shades of those colours. Decide ahead of time which colors you’re going to use, and stick to it.
Complementary Colours
Complementary colors are opposite each other on a color wheel. The 3 most common sets are:
- red and green
- blue and orange
- yellow and purple
These colours work surprisingly well together.
Complementary colours also are a good way to pick colors that will be easily readable against a certain background: look for the exact opposite colour to maximise readability.
Analog Colours
Another approach to try is to pick colours that are similar to your main colour, meaning that they’re near to it on the colour wheel. Red, for example, goes well with its analog colours, orange and yellow. If over done, this can make your blog look too bright, but in moderation the results can look good. It’s no coincidence that these combinations often occur in nature.
Chromatic Colours
My personal favourite, chromatic colours use different shades and hues of 1 colour for your entire design, nothing else except black and white. For example, you might use light blue, bright blue and dark blue together. This creates a sleek and professional look.
Take Colours From Nature
For inspiration for a colour scheme, go for a walk outside. Take a look at plants, landscapes, and animals. Nature knows how to use colours, so learn from it.
Color Blindness
Try to make sure that your design uses colour to make itself aesthetically pleasing, but doesn’t rely on the colour scheme for anything essential. Statistics show that as many as 10% of the web users are at least partially colour blind, so you need to consider these people when you design your blog. Make sure they can at least read your text.
To see things the way a colour blind user would, visit vischeck.com.
