Two Colors and Your Website Is Yours
Every design now takes two colors from you: an accent and a background. They flow through links, buttons, headings, your email signature and your business card.
Why only two
Because three is where it goes wrong. A palette of five colors chosen one at a time by somebody who is not a designer produces a page that looks like a page rather than like a person.
Two colors is enough to feel deliberate and few enough that they cannot fight. The rest of the page stays in the neutral scale the design already uses.
Choosing an accent
It has to work as small text on your background, which rules out most of the colors people are drawn to. Pale blue, yellow, light gray and mid green all look pleasant in a picker and become invisible as a link on a phone in daylight.
The safe method: pick the color you want, then darken it until it is clearly legible against your background. It will look less exciting in the picker and considerably better on the site.
We show a contrast reading next to the picker. Anything below the recommended threshold is flagged, not blocked, because occasionally you will have a reason.
Where to get one
If you have a headshot you use everywhere, pull a color out of it: a coat, a background, something in the frame. It will harmonize with your photographs automatically, which is the hardest part of this to do by eye.
If you have no idea, near-black on off-white is a genuinely good answer and it is what a lot of professional sites use. Restraint is never the thing that costs you a job.
What to avoid
- Pure black on pure white. Harsh on a screen. Off-black and off-white are easier to read.
- A background color strong enough to compete with your photographs.
- Anything that only works in one lighting condition, meaning yours.
- Changing it every few months. Consistency is the argument in brand identity.
It travels
Setting the color here sets it everywhere: your Accent Bar signature, your signature photo treatment, your card. That is the point. Somebody who meets you, takes a card and later visits your site should recognize it.
Create a free actor website and pick two colors.
