Here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design experts. We work with companies and businesses across Manchester, and the surrounding area, including Wigan and Southport, to provide web design solutions that can help businesses grow. As a result, we have produced this guide to everything you should know about the importance of colour contrast in web design.
What is the importance of colour contrast in web design?
Colour contrast is an important feature for any website. This can have both important practical and visual effects, and can be very useful for a range of purposes, including:
- Improving legibility
- Drawing attention to key features
- Creating visual interest
Colour contrast and legibility
The most crucial reason for deliberating about the level of colour contrast on your website is the legibility. You need your text based website content to be easy to read on devices of all sizes and designs, including small mobile screens, and larger desktop monitors. The contrast between the text colour and the background or content behind the text is key to creating this legibility, which is why most print is black and white. However, for many people the glare from a white background can actually make it more difficult to read, and a lighter, pastel colour can be more effective. In addition, as dark mode design has proved, inverting the colours to a black background can make websites easier to visually process, preventing eye strain. For your website, you will need to consider this information, and select a colour scheme that allows for a good level of contrast between the text and the background. This will need to be tested for screens of different sizes and resolutions.
Colour contrast to draw attention to key features
In addition, colour contrast can be used to create areas of your website page that really stand out, even for those potential customers or clients who are simply scrolling through. These areas can make users stop and focus on this content, and so this contrast can be a great way to get key information across. It is also a good option to use colour contrast for call to action button colours. Typically, these are the buttons you want to direct the most amount of people to, to promote the maximum number of sales, bookings or sign ups.
Colour contrast to create visual interest
Finally, colour contrast can simply help your website be more visually interesting. A website that uses only plain colours is not as likely to stand out and grab attention as a website with a good use of colour contrast. And if your website is not grabbing attention, the chances are that your potential customers or clients will simply get bored, and move onto the website of your competitor. Small amounts of colour contrast can be used as accent colours, or at key points of the web design, simply to engage users and add visual interest.
For more information or for professional web design support, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.