One thing to always remember is that the main goal of your website should be for it to be readable. Otherwise, what’s the point of anyone going there?

Have you ever been to a webpage that was so garrish, using tons of colors that it actually hurt your eyes? Or a page where the print was very close to the same color as the background, so you could barely read it?

These are pitfalls to avoid.

Some of the general rules of thumb are:

1. Don’t use colors just because you can, use them as a way of enhancing, not detracting from your website and it’s message.

2. While you may have the option of using approximately 16million colors on our website, not all of them will display as you expect. This is where “websafe” colors come in. Although, not as important as it used to be, these colors will display properly on any browser. There are 216 of these colors.

3. It’s best to use basic colors such as black, gray, red, green, yellow, blue or white for text colors. Although I don’t much like colors like red, green or yellow, because they can be hard on the eyes, or have a lack of contrast. This is your own personal preference though.

4. For best readability, choose a font color that has a lot of contrast with the background that is will be on. This makes your page easy to read, and does not strain your visitors’ eyes.

5. Ideally, try to limit your color range to no more than 4 colors per page, and ideally, your site will look it’s most unified if you use the same color scheme throughout your pages.

6. Pick your colors based on the mood that you want to convey. For instance warm colors, earth tones and others, will create or stir up emotion, Cool colors, blues, slate, etc, will produce a calming effect. For example, if you run a business and expect your clients to contact you via your website for comments and complaints, do you want to get them all fired up first? Or would you like them calm? On the other hand, if you have an art website, you might want your viewer’s emotions to be stirred, and would consider the use of warmer colors to help to invoke these feelings. There is a great deal of psychology in color, and it’s worth reading up on.