Colors exist not only to make your site look pretty. Colors have a more important function – to make your site usable. This is why a designer must always think of readability first and beauty second when choosing the colors for a site. We will also talk about tools to use, so stay tuned.

When you think about the number of available colors, it looks easy to pick a bunch of them that go well together and are readable. If you stick with classic background colors, such as white (FFFFFF), or very light gray (F5F5F5, FAFAFA, FCFCFC, etc.) and foreground colors such as black (000000), or very dark gray (080808, 050505, 030303, etc.), or the lightest/darkest pair of the main color (i.e. red, green, blue or whatever color you are using) on your site you might wonder why readability is an issue at all.

However, sooner or later you will get fed up with these classic combinations everybody is using and you will want something fancier.

This is where your problems start. These fancier combinations might be pleasing aesthetically but in terms of readability they are not necessarily winners. Of course, nobody says it is impossible to find good combinations outside the group of frequently used ones. With the right tools I will mention in this article finding colors with good readability becomes much easier. However, before we go to the tools, let’s review some of the basics of colors and readability.

Color Brightness is determined by the following formula:

((Red value X 299) + (Green value X 587) + (Blue value X 114)) / 1000

Note: This algorithm is taken from a formula for converting RGB values to YIQ values. This brightness value gives a perceived brightness for a color.

Color Difference is determined by the following formula:

(maximum (Red value 1, Red value 2) - minimum (Red value 1, Red value 2)) + (maximum (Green value 1, Green value 2) - minimum (Green value 1, Green value 2)) + (maximum (Blue value 1, Blue value 2) - minimum (Blue value 1, Blue value 2))

The range for color brightness difference is 125. The range for color difference is 500.

These formulas might look pretty cryptic and hard to understand but when you use a tool that calculates the values for you, for instance the Color Contrast tool, you easily get an answer if the colors you have chosen pass the test or not.

However, unless you feel like reinventing the wheel and hunting for color combinations with good brightness and difference, you can stick to the safe choices that have already been developed for you, such as dark text on a light background.

The Golden Classics: Dark Text on a Light Background

All equal, dark text on a light background provides the best readability. Of course, it depends on which colors you choose but the highest readability ratio is achieved when you use black on white:

As you see from the screenshot above, readability varies depending on the font size (and obviously the font itself) and a good tool will tell you if the combination you have chosen is good for titles only or for both titles and body text.

Generally, the larger the font size, the more readable it is. Don’t count on this too much because as you know, for body text 10-14 is the most used size (i.e. is relatively small), which means that for body texts you won’t be able to use a color that is readable for titles.

Black on white isn’t the only great combination. If you want to see more examples of excellent to good contrast when you use white as a background color, check the first table in this article.

White backgrounds are pretty common but sometimes you will want more color. For instance, some very pale shades of red, green, yellow, blue, etc. make great backgrounds when used with black or another very dark foreground color. These combinations are not as readable as when you use black but still the ratio is good.

Here are some examples of combinations where the background color is different from white and the foreground color is different from black:

For Differing Background and Foreground

Ivoryblack (#292421) on lavenderblush1 (#FFF0F5)

Midnight blue (#191970) on ghostwhite (#F8F8FF)

Sgi gray 12 (#1E1E1E) on mintcream (#F5FFFA)

One small trick many designers use to make a page more readable (and more pleasing to the eye, too) is to employ gradients for background. A gradient of white and a very pale shade of any other color works best.

Well, you can’t measure its brightness and contrast using the readability formulas but if the two colors that constitute the gradient separately have good readability values, when combined, the result is even better.

The Intricacies of a Dark Background

Dark backgrounds can be very depressing – not only because dark colors are traditionally related to bad things in life, at least in the Western cultures but also because they are a lot of pain to choose a readable foreground color to go with.

The problem comes from the fact that even if your contrast values are good, this doesn’t make it easier to read the text. White on black might have the best ratio but it causes eye fatigue pretty quickly. As Pabini Gabriel-Petit writes, “On a black background, the high-chroma colors yellow (#FFFF00), green (#00FF00), cyan (#00FFFF), and magenta (#FF00FF) provide the best contrast.”

Dark Background Choices

If these color combinations, no matter how readable they are supposed to be, give you the feeling you are back in the 80s or early 90s when monitors were green and the text was orange, you are not alone.

I have never used such an antique monitor, so I am not able to tell from experience but always when I land on a site with a dark background and light text I have to read, I get the feeling it is a time machine that takes me back two or three decades ago and my eyes are the first to object.

OK, dark backgrounds might be cute but when I have to read a 2,000+ word article (and the comments under it), this makes me cry – literally! Some sites that care about their users (and their users’ eyes) provide ways to switch colors, so if you don’t like the default dark background, you are not forced to watch it.

Additionally, there are many ways to override the default colors a site uses but I’d rather visit sites that use readable color schemes than spend my time fine tuning the colors.

Probably I go to extremes, but I will personally never recommend to use a dark background with light font for sites with lot of text to read – I feel this is a usability sin #1. For other types of sites – i.e. image galleries, or even corporate sites where there aren’t 1,000+ word texts, dark backgrounds aren’t a no-no.

Those Tricky Colors That Fit Nowhere

After I discussed the two most common scenarios – i.e. dark on light and light on dark, the only thing left is to discuss all the other color combinations you can think of.

These color combinations include the majority of colors but for one reason or another, you can use them neither for background, nor for text color because no matter how masterfully you combine them, either the contrast is low, or the combinations aren’t esthetically pleasing (or both).

Of course, this doesn’t mean these colors are useless. Not at all – they are great for headings, especially with larger font sizes, and for emphasis, as seen from the next examples:

Red 3 (#CD0000) on seashell2 (#EEE5DE)

Blue 4 (#00008B) on cornflowerblue (#6495ED)

Colors have a huge effect on readability. This is why you need to choose them wisely so that they not only create aesthetically pleasing combinations but also make it easier for users to read the text. Text is an integral part of any site and we shouldn’t punish visitors for coming to our site by using hard to read color combinations. This is where we are going to show you some great examples of websites that uses bold color combinations to catch the viewer’s attention.

Be Inspired by These Bold Colored Websites

How do designers achieve this? In the present trends, if you want to make a blindingly unforgettable statement, you need a few things:

  • A saturated color scheme which is bright enough to catch one’s interest without blinding him or her
  • An awesome and probably mind-blowing image (a photograph or a graphic illustration)
  • A uniquely remarkable tagline.

Those, however, are not easily achieved. To attain a beautiful, bold color design, you need to think it through. You also need some design skills and a great deal of guts.

Because there is no single general rule in choosing colors for your design, I will just lend you some inspiration! This is to help you exercise your creative muscles because colors, as discussed in a lot of design blogs, are important to web design.

So, to cut to the chase, I present to you the examples of beautiful bold color scheme designs. I hope that it will somehow offer some inspiration on how to use these colors effectively.

Bold Color Scheme Showcase in Web Design

Abby Putinski

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andCulture
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Artem and Julia Wedding

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BarCamp Omaha

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Caramel Budgie

beautiful-examples-of-bold-colors-caramel

Collision Labs

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Connect Mania

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Dangers of Fracking

beautiful-examples-of-bold-colors-dangers-of-fracking

Dear Mum

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do a backflip

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Dropify

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Verde

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Every Last Drop

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Flow Media

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Gloo Sticker Albums

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Gum

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Hy

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jorgeATGU

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Kick My Habits

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Lets Yep!

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Netlife

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Nineswiss

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Pixilate

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Rainbow Nursery

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Sailthru 2012 Annual Report

beautiful-examples-of-bold-colors-sailthru

Sánchez Romero Carvajal

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Squarespace

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Studio MPLS

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Tapped

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The Basement

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The Design Files Open House

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Think Big

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Tornobambino

beautiful-examples-of-bold-tornobambino

TriplAgent

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WDG

beautiful-examples-of-bold-wdg

Will Fernandes

beautiful-examples-of-bold-will-fernandes

Xylem Digital

beautiful-examples-of-bold-Xylem-Digital

YCN Studio

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Bold and big, these websites are genuine examples of designs that focus on the subtle and little things: colors, fonts and placement. These little things result into drastic effects in a design. Yes, this is a dangerous move for a designer.

It might even result into the viewer being too shocked because of the bold colors, but the designers took the risk and look what they have gotten! You have seen now a lot of color combinations and bold websites.

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