Selecting a color scheme for your website or blog website

Color preferences by age and gender for web pages and website color schemes.

Color preference tendencies by gender

Women tend to dislike dark or black web page backgrounds. I am commenting out of my personal experience. When I went through multiple color schemes on my first website in 2006. I started with bolder colors with a dark background. All of my friends who are men told me it looked fine and some of them liked it a lot. Almost all of my friends who are women said that it was too dark and that the background had to be white or very pale. Of course once I switched to a light background, my other colors no longer matched. After several color scheme changes I got stuck with white background and not-very-bold colors for everything else. The women I know don't complain and the men I know don't either.

Color preferences by age

Children prefer bolder and brighter colors, so a site with beige, light blue, and gray would probably lose their attention extremely fast. As we get older we start to prefer fewer warmer and bold colors and start to prefer cooler, paler, and more neutral colors so beige, white, black, pale blue, pale green, and pale yellow are great for websites for those over 55.

Choose your website's theme colors or color scheme according to demographics and other criteria.

Now when I design a new website, I try to imagine the largest demographic as a combination of young, old, men, or women, and I try to make it more appropriate for them without alienating the other groups.

• A site for children will have bolder colors. A site for 55+ will have mostly beige and other pale colors.
• A site for women will have lighter colors with a touch of either pink, or purple.
• A site for men will have gray, blue, or red added.
• A site with Very mixed demographics will have a mix of colors that are not too strong and typically cool like green and blue. I might add one neutral color for balance.
• If a site is about a holiday, I might use that holiday's colors in my design o help put the visitor in a holiday mood.

General color scheme considerations

Light on dark or dark on light?

In general, you should stick to darker text on a lighter background like black text on a white background. Many people say it is hard for them to read light text on a dark background like white text on a black background. Artists and more creative types are less likely to have this complaint.

The colors should allow the visitor to read the website without squinting or getting a headache.

Color schemes that have colors that don't match will cause frustration or sometimes a headache. If the text color and background colors don't contrast sufficiently, it makes it difficult to read. For example: Dark brown background with light brown text. It can be done but there has to be a significant difference between the two shades of brown or it will tire his or her eyes.

A color scheme should not have garish colors.

Another way to annoy your visitors is to have garish color combinations. I remember one fascinating site with pink text over a vomit-green background and purple header text. I couldn't concentrate on the content. All I could think of was how hideous and repulsive that site was.

A website's theme shouldn't have too many colors

While having just back and white is boring, having too many colors in your site's color scheme will be distracting. Try to have between 2 and 5 colors. This includes tonal variations. A site with light blue, medium blue, dark blue with a white background has four colors.