Is Your Website Colour Friendly?

Colour has a wonderful way of setting the mood, or theme, for a website and it can also help you to define yourself as a trademark brand or make your website exciting to look at.  Whether you are hoping to make it look friendly, fun and warm or sophisticated in nature, it can often be just a simple case of how you use colour on your website to get the desired effect.

When it comes to creating your own website or publishing an online document or a hard copy printed publication many will take the time and effort to make it look good and will often think about the content and the general layout but the use of colour must also be given some thought as failure to do so can make it all look hard, or even silly, to read.

More noticeable when it comes to online websites and PDF format publications, in the main, the problem of overusing, or mixing, colours can be a big problem for those who have the condition called colour blindness.  One in twelve people have that problem by the way to various degrees.

Are you colourblind?  Not exactly a life threatening condition but it can be if you touch a live electric wire and blow yourself to bits because you could not see the colour of the wire that showed it to be active.

Colour blindness is a genetic condition that can be inherited and passed down to family members, in general speaking terms, and although some only have a mild form of it others will suffer a more problematic version that can and does create all sorts of problems for them often on a daily basis.

To explain to people what it is like to be colour blind is not an easy thing to do as sufferers can see all colours but cannot identify them in the normal way.  In some cases, they cannot see, or name, various shades of colour and in other cases they cannot tell the difference between two colours that are nearly the same.  In any event this can make reading content on an online website, or a colour themed document very hard to do if the colour of the printed text is clashing with a colour background that is not that compatible.

In some cases a person will find it very difficult to even see the printed content at all if the print is very similar to the background colour.  Imagine trying to read white print on a white background for example.

The general rule of thumb, as the saying goes, is to have black print on a white background in the main when it comes to printed articles, or formal documents, or a light-coloured, (pastel colour), background when highlighting specific content.

Of course there are exceptions to these general guidelines depending on various things such as having white print on a photo with a darkish background as a perfect example.  Doing that often works better than having standard black print in some cases.

As with anything of this nature it is often a case of trial and error but having someone who suffers from colour blindness giving advice can help a lot.  Although it should be noted that some people have problems with one set of colours while others have this problem in various other ways so it is best to get more than one person to guide you on these things.

When it comes to publishing written content always check on not only font size, style and spacing but also colour clarity as well.  And even if there are no problems seeing the printed content remember that over the top bright colours may work well for a fun, or child based learning website for example, but it’s not really that suitable for a formal business website when it comes to ‘in your face’ bright colours.

I also have a mild form of colourblindness by the way.

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