When you’re a small business owner, it’s likely you’ve grown accustomed to making small changes to your business over time. Maybe you’ve adjusted details ranging from your process and your client experience to your brand’s color palette and your website’s layout. Something we’ve learned over our past 10 years in business is: while small changes can add up to create a meaningful, positive difference, small changes can also cause certain areas of our business to feel disconnected or to lack cohesion. Today, we want to focus solely on your website’s color palette — how you can go back to the basics to ensure your website’s color palette is elevated and purpose-driven.

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How to Elevate Your Website’s Color Palette

Welcome to Episode 171 of The Brand It, Build It Podcast: How to Elevate Your Website’s Color Palette.

Last week in Episode 170, we discussed the psychology of color in brand design — how colors can affect how your business is perceived and whether your prospective clients and customers confidently book your services or purchase your products.

Whether you’ve designed your brand, or you’ve hired a professional designer to design your brand, one common question we receive is: How do I effectively use my new brand details within my web design? Or if you’ve tried to use your brand details within your web design, why aren’t the details coming together the way you thought they would or should?

Here is our step-by-step approach for elevating your website’s color palette:

1. Pay attention to the hierarchy of your brand’s color palette. Did your designer intend for some colors to be used in primary ways and for others to be used in secondary ways? Pay attention to the hierarchy of your brand’s color palette, and how some colors were intended to be used in primary ways, and others were intended to be used in secondary ways.
2. Rely on neutrals, and use colors as accents. If you’re unsure of the proper hierarchy of your brand’s color palette, it can be beneficial to rely more on a neutral color palette, and to use any bolder colors as accents — such as buttons, lines, icons, textures, or finer details within your web design. When you do, you create an elevated aesthetic while still building brand awareness through the use of your brand’s color palette.
3. Remember less is more. A small business can possess a colorful brand, and still create an elevated aesthetic overall. One design in our Portfolio, Cheers! Chicago, shows how a business can have a colorful, engaging brand — but still err on the side of being elevated, polished, and sophisticated. No matter your color palette, remember that less can be more.
4. Embrace white space. White space, or negative space, is the space above, below, and between sections within your web design. Some people believe white space is simply “empty space” within a design, but white space actually serves a deeper and much more meaningful purpose. White space allows the content of your web design space to breathe; it can create a more relaxing experience for your visitors, it can help your website’s content and copywriting to be more easily digested and understood, and it can lend itself to creating a more user-friendly, engaging, and memorable website browsing experience overall. If there is one tip we could advise all creatives on, it would be: Embrace white space. When you create just a bit more space above, below, and between sections within your web design, you create a space visitors can more easily engage with. And who wouldn’t want to create an easy experience for visitors?
5. Pay attention to color contrast and accessibility. Ensure the copywriting on your website is easily readable — specifically when choosing your font styles and background colors. Creating high contrast between copywriting colors and background colors enhances readability — so aim to ensure your web design is accessible for all visitors.

By following these steps, we believe you can elevate your website’s color palette and create a visually captivating experience for your visitors. Remember, your color choices should align with your brand’s personality, evoke your desired emotions, and ensure readability and accessibility. Thanks for tuning in!

About Brand It, Build It Podcast, Hosted by Kelly Zugay

Hosted by Kelly Zugay, co-founder of With Grace and Gold, The Brand It, Build It Podcast is a leading small business marketing podcast for small business owners, creatives, and founders. Weekly, brief, actionable episodes will equip you to build a successful, sustainable small business. Since 2014, With Grace and Gold has provided award-winning custom brand and Showit web design and completely customizable Showit website templates for small businesses worldwide.