Web Design Color Trends in 2023
In the ever-changing world of web design, color choices are at the forefront when creating a memorable, user-friendly experience. In 2023, especially with the many technology-enhanced capabilities available today, it’s more important than ever to be aware of the latest color trends and how they affect users who visit your website.
Believe it or not, color combinations and choosing the right primary color, plus accent colors, will help make your website pop and stand out from the competition.
From the Pantone Color of the Year, a vibrant, rich raspberry named Viva Magenta, to your favorite go-to shades, find out what colors are hot right now, how they impact your customers and visitors, and how you can use them to give your website a beautiful update!
2023 Web Design Color Trends
Over the last couple of years, color trends have traveled around the color wheel and back.
In 2018-2019, nostalgia was on top with 70’s inspired colors like avocado green and harvest gold.
In the early 20-teens, nature colors with lots of greens and blues were used to communicate a desire for sustainability and eco-friendliness.
During the pandemic, colors shifted to desert hues and colors of the landscape as people longed for travel and outdoor experiences.
This year, web design color trends in 2023 are taking a more optimistic turn adding vibrancy and edginess with bold color combinations and interesting uses of color and white space to delight and enchant visitors to your site.
Bold, Eye-Catching Colors
Some of the latest web design color trends for 2023 include bold colors and hues such as purple, fuchsia, red, yellow, and blue, which give off a modern and energetic feel. You want to choose colors that are eye-catching and complement your overall design. This will attract potential customers and allow them to easily navigate your site.
Another use would be to opt for lighter shades of black or gray to create a sophisticated look and then pick bright and energetic colors to be used as accent colors for added impact!
Metallics and Silver Chrome Add a Touch of Glamour
Metallics brings a touch of glamour and luxury to any web design, without it becoming too overpowering. Consider incorporating gold, silver, copper, and more subtle bronze tones into your web design strategy.
Standing out from the crowd, Silver Chrome is highly reflective and can really brighten up a webpage with its mirror-like effect. It works beautifully in 3D renderings and adds a bold, high tech feel.
Used with Dark Mode design, Silver Chrome and Metallics add texture and make the design elements, such as buttons and images, stand out and draw your user’s attention to important CTAs and other action-oriented call outs.
Soft, Understated Hues or…Millennial Kitsch
Soft and understated hues—think pastels like lavender, soft pink, mint, and blush—are being referred to as Millennial Kitsch and are set to be huge in 2023. Think color trends inspired by the late 1990s to early 2000s when tween and teenage girls ruled the market. It was a time of optimism and hope for the future.
This color palette is a great way to bring a feeling of luxury and femininity to your website, while still offering a fresh and modern look. Unlike more vibrant colors, they give off an airy, calming atmosphere that’s perfect for sites that want to focus on providing a pleasant user experience.
Warm Mediterranean Hues
Adjacent to the greens and blues you often think of as Mediterranean inspired colors, is a full range of warm tones that include terra cottas, dusky reds and oranges, and tones of clay and ceramic pottery. Soothing with muted hues that encourage calmness, this color palette is really catching on in 2023.
Modern Monochrome Color Schemes
Monochrome color schemes are one of the best website color combinations in 2023. This type of color palette uses a mix of black, white, and grays to create a classic but modern look.
In keeping with the bold aesthetic, you can keep it fresh and dynamic by adding tiny pops of dynamic colors such as pink or yellow to break up the monochrome tones. Doing this helps make your website interesting and memorable without overwhelming visitors with too much color.
Embrace Nature-Inspired Neutrals and Pastels
The use of light, neutral colors inspired by nature have been trending for a few years now, and this look isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. There’s something calming about these tones which make them really easy to work with the web designer.
Think soft creams, botanical greens, and pale pinks when it comes to incorporating these colors into your design or try these hues in an undersaturated look for something interesting.
Dual Tone Color Schemes
This trend is making itself known as one of the best color combinations for websites in 2023—you choose the color.
To achieve the affect, think bright blue and dark blue playing off one another, it can be used with backgrounds, fonts and scripting, or images (or all of the above). This is different from the often used gradient style where one color gradually turns a different color—dual tone color tends to change abruptly and creates a more striking effect.
Why are Website Color Combinations in 2023 Important?
Have you ever noticed how certain colors can affect your mood? You’re not alone—the psychology of color has been an important tool used by marketers and designers to influence the decisions of consumers for decades.
It’s no mistake that Target stores are filled with red. Their brand color elicits a response of impulsiveness and excitement—that may be why so many people say they visited Target for a simple item or two and leave with a whole basket of new stuff they couldn’t live without. It’s literally a call to action.
In this comprehensive look, you’ll learn how different colors can be used to evoke specific feelings and emotions which translates to the best color combinations for websites in 2023.
In terms of color psychology, this is the meaning in these primary and secondary colors:
- Red: Passion, love, anger, danger, excitement
- Orange: Energy, warmth, happiness, enthusiasm
- Yellow: Joy, optimism, happiness
- Green: Nature, growth, health, tranquility
- Blue: Trust, loyalty, calmness, stability
- Purple: Royalty, luxury, mystery, spirituality, dignity
- Pink: Love, femininity, sweetness, innocence, compassion
- Brown: Nature, earthiness, reliability, stability
Once you understand the color psychology, how do you put that knowledge to work for your site design and web design color trends in 2023? Try these ideas:
Analyze Color Associations and Meanings
Researching the history and symbolism of each color can be a great way to understand its relationship with marketing. For example, red has long been associated with passion and energy, while light blue has been known to invoke feelings of relaxation and peacefulness.
Understanding the meaning behind hues can help you make more informed decisions about which colors to use in your campaigns. This can be where an experienced color and design specialist is invaluable as part of your website design team.
Understand Your Target Audience and Their Preferences
As you begin to understand the meaning of color, take into consideration the preferences of your target audience. Different products can have an association with gender or culture and it’s important to understand how those meanings may vary when using color psychology effectively in marketing. Being aware of nuances associated with a particular color that can help you create an effective and meaningful connection with your audience.
Learn Which Colors Complement Each Other Best
Once you have identified the right colors, tones, and hues, that work best for your audience and brand, the next step is to determine which colors complement each other best.
A good color palette should consist of one dominant color, a secondary color, and several accent colors. Pay attention to how warm or cool each color is to create balance in the palette. Coordinating colors properly will help strengthen your branding message and ensure a positive reception from users on your site.
Be Aware of the Cultural Influences on Color Choices
With the vast diversity in cultures throughout the U.S., it is crucial to understand that different cultures have different meanings associated with certain colors and it is important to research and identify those differences when developing marketing.
For example, in most western countries the color white is associated with purity and innocence, but in some Asian countries like China, white represents death and mourning. Similarly, while love is symbolized by red in the U.S., it symbolizes unluckiness in Nigeria and Central Africa, and abundance in China.
It’s important to stay mindful of these color associations so that you don’t unwittingly offend customers.
Monitor How Changes to Your Website Impact User Experiences
As the saying goes, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
With this insight in mind, digital marketers must constantly monitor how changes to a website, such as color and branding design, affect the user experience—both good and bad. Marketers can track customer engagement by keeping an eye on website traffic, outgoing shipments, product reviews and more.
Paying attention to such data points can offer valuable insights into what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to connecting with your target audience.
Once You Select Color Schemes for Web Design in 2023, What’s Next? 7 Steps to Guide You Through the Process!
Now that you have selected the overall brand color scheme for web design, it’s time to work with an experienced website design and development agency that has experience in taking your colors, brand, and overall strategy and turning that into a fully functioning website.
Here are seven steps to guide you through the process:
1. Identify Your Goals — Collaborate with your design and development team to identify the objectives that the new website should achieve. Specifically, communicate your brand strategy and long-term goals so they understand the focus and functionality the website will need to have to be effective.
2. Develop a Site Plan — Once you are clear on the site’s objectives, your design/development team will establish the project’s scope. A Site Plan will be developed to provide a map for what features and web pages are needed for the site to achieve its objectives.
3. Creation of the Design Wireframes — With the scope and site plan clearly established, the team will design working wireframes and figure out how the features and information defined in the scope definition will interact on the site itself.
4. Creation of Content — Next, with a clearer idea of the overall structure of the website, the team will begin developing the content for the individual pages, always keeping search engine optimization (SEO) in mind to help keep pages narrowly focused on a single subject and power up the rankings through Google.
5. Develop Site — The development team will begin creating the site architecture and ensuring that the design components are all included and functional. Using the latest technology, developers will build your site to the agreed upon specifications.
6. Time to Test — Now that the site is created, it must be thoroughly tested to ensure all of the pages are functioning perfectly. This testing process will find everything from user experience concerns to basic broken links so that issues can be repaired before launching your new site.
7. Ready, Set, Launch — Once everything is functioning flawlessly, it’s time to organize and carry out your website launch! This should involve scheduling your debut and developing your communication plans, i.e., when will you launch and how will you inform the public? Last, it’s time to open the champagne!
Picking the Best Website Color Palettes
Now that you’ve learned about the color possibilities, it’s time to select an experienced digital marketing and design/development agency to help you turn these color ideas and web design trends into a beautiful new website.
Contact Lounge Lizard to learn more about our 20+ years in the business where we have designed and developed over 600 sites for our clients worldwide. We offer a full-service array digital marketers, SEO experts, designers and developers that are all at the top of their fields.
