Color Theory in UI Design.
One of the time-consuming still absolutely necessary stages in UI design is color choice. Designers sometimes can spend hours picking up the right color palette.
Color Matters! Color can affect thinking, change actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite. When used in the right ways, color can even save on energy consumption.
Every color evokes different opinions in people. In this post, let’s discuss color theory and how we can combine colors.
Let’s begin!
Different moods are attributed to different colors and you can use these different colors to achieve a different conclusion.
- Red: Red is a very hot color. It’s associated with fire, violence, Love, Energy, Passion, and Intensity. In history, it’s been associated with both the Devil and Cupid. Red can actually have a physical effect on people, raising blood pressure and respiration rates. It’s been shown to enhance human metabolism, too. In design, it’s a great color to use when power or passion wants to be portrayed in the design.
- Yellow: Yellow is often considered the brightest and most energizing of the warm colors. It’s associated with happiness and sunshine. yellow is not a good choice for the background of the product as it can cause attention to fatigue. It’s an excellent choice for app icon design or app screenshot design.
- Green: Green is a very down-to-earth color. It can represent new beginnings and growth. Alternatively, green can also represent envy or jealousy, and a lack of experience. It’s appropriate for designs related to wealth, food, and nature.
- Blue: It represents calmness, trust, stability, and responsibility. Light blues can be refreshing and friendly. Dark blues are more strong and reliable. Both Facebook and Twitter are blue. :)
- Black: It is the strongest of the neutral colors. On the positive side, it’s commonly associated with power, elegance, and formality. On the negative side, it can be associated with evil, death, and mystery.
- White: Associated with purity, cleanliness, and virtue. In design, it can help to convey cleanliness and simplicity and is popular in minimalist designs.
- Purple: represents royalty, wealth, feminity. In design, dark purples can give a sense of wealth and luxury. Light purples are softer and are associated with spring and romance.
To understand these theories, look into any app/website and try to understand what techniques or design principles they’re using to make their design look beautiful and what emotion they’re trying to convey.
“The details are not the details. They make the design” — Charles Eames.
Each color has its unique meaning and idea in the long run of human life. So while designing an app or website, always think about what emotions you want to evoke and ideas you’re trying to convey to the user and pick a color palette accordingly.
Traditional color scheme types
There are a number of predefined color scheme standards. Let’s look into them.
1- MONOCHROMATIC
Monochromatic color schemes are made up of different tones, shades, and tints within a specific hue. They’re very modern and very much in vogue. Monochromatic schemes are easy to create, but can also be boring when done poorly. Adding in a strong neutral like white or black can help keep things interesting.
Monochromatic schemes are easy to create, but can also be boring when done poorly. Adding in a strong neutral like white or black can help keep things interesting. These color palettes work very well for modern digital design.
2- ANALOGOUS
Analogous color schemes are very easy to create. They basically are created by using three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. While neutrals can be added in as well, two of the shades involved will be a primary color and the third will be a mix of the two.
3- COMPLEMENTARY
This combination is created by combining colors from opposite sides of the color wheel. In their most basic form, these schemes consist of only two colors, but can easily be expanded using tones, tints, and shades.
The base color is main and dominant, while the complementary color is used only as an accent. A combination of one warm and one cold color is always created. So we have to avoid using this combination.
4- SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY
Split complementary schemes add more complexity than regular complementary schemes. For this combination, pick up a color from the color wheel and then pick up two colors that are adjacent to the opposite color.
5- TRIADIC
For this color combination, pick up a color and draw an equilateral triangle. This is one of the more diverse color schemes. This too will create a harmonious look but without the slightly monochromatic styling, instead, it’s much more interesting and lively.
A few tips while choosing a color scheme…
1- Choose the right color for the right purpose — Different color conveys different meanings and senses.
2- Try using colors as a background — background color can liven up the main image or screen and make it look even more efficient and expressive.
3- Try Gradients — It strengthens the potential of color in different design solutions.
4- Implement 60–30–10 Rule — This design rule is a timeless decorating technique that can help you put a color scheme together easily. The 60% + 30% + 10% proportion is meant to give balance to the colors.
60% is your dominant hue, 30% is secondary color and 10% is for accent color.
Tools for designing with color
There are a lot of online tools to use for finding a color palette or making your own.
1- Coolors.co
Coolors.co is a professional color picker. It allows you to lock your selected color and press space to generate a palette. You can also upload images and then make a color palette from it.
2- Color Hunt
Here you can find Hot, Random, Popular color palette and depend on the mood of the color palette, you can find one for your particular project.
3- Paletton
Paletton is a good tool to pick a color. This tool is especially useful when you have picked your primary colors and want to generate extra tones.
Conclusion
The best way to learn to create beautiful color schemes is to practice. Create a scheme on a daily basis. You can do this at first by using the above-mentioned tools. You only learn something by doing it. The more you try different color schemes, the better idea you will get of how it looks and works for your users.
Thanks for reading. I hope the article helped you understand how to use Color in UI Design. If you like this article, please 👏 and share it so that more people can read it. I’d love to hear any feedback or any thoughts on the post.
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