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Using Colors in Website Design

History of Color in Web Design

The internet and it's web sites has become a visual medium. When web sites first hit the internet they were primarily text base and included minimal colors and many times no graphics. Today with the rapid advances that have taken place their has been a reversal, many sites have become overloaded with colors and graphics and provide very little useful content!

216 Safe Web Colors

Various Computers/browsers display colors differently. A color in one computer may be seen as more saturated than in another computer and may not provide the intended impact that the designer wanted.

Some years ago, when most Computers/browsers only supported 256 different colors, a list of 216 Web Safe Colors was suggested as a Web standard. The reason for this was that the Microsoft and Mac operating system used 40 different "reserved" fixed system colors (about 20 each).

Colors & Web Design Today

We are not sure how important this is now, since most computers today have the ability to display millions of different colors, but the choice is left to you. The 216 cross-browser color palette was created to ensure that all computers would display the colors correctly when running a 256 color palette.

When looking at colors & website design we need to consider several things:

• User technology (less important today)
• User vision deficits**
• Older Computers/browsers versions have a limited range in color display also a percent of the population has vision deficits. 

**Red/Green color blindness is by far the most common form, about 99%, and causes problems in distinguishing reds and greens. Another color deficiency Blue/Yellow also exists, but is rare and there is no commonly available test for it.

Color blindness seems to occur in:

1 in 12 people have some sort of color deficiency. About 8% of men and 0.4% of women in the US.

• 0.38% of women are deuteranomalous (around 95% of all color deficient women).
• 0.005% of the population are totally color blind.
• 0.003% of the population have tritanopia.
• Protanomaly occurs in about 1% of males.
• Deuteranomaly occurs in about 5% of males. It's the most common color deficiency.
• Protanopia occurs in about 1% of males.
• Deuteranopia occurs in about 1% of males.

Website Design & Color

We do web site testing for color compatibility and accessibility to provide the best balance between the visitor experience and visual impact of your web site. Remember that color should never be the only clue for an action or highlight! So for example links never use color alone, but in combination with underlined or bolded text.

Some interesting links: (Both open in new window)