Have you ever wondered why certain brands grab your attention and leave a lasting impression? One of the most powerful tools in branding is colour. It can evoke emotions, create a sense of trust, and help your website stand out from others. But how do you choose the right colours for your Wix website?
In this blog post, we'll guide you through 6 steps to help you choose the perfect palette for your brand:
By the end of this post, you'll be equipped with the knowledge and tools to create a visually stunning and cohesive brand identity for your Wix website. Let's get started!
Step 1: What's Your Brand Personality
Your brand personality is the set of human characteristics, traits, and emotions that you want your brand to communicate to your ideal client. By thinking about this, you can create a unique and memorable brand identity that really resonates with your audience and attracts the right-fit people to work with.
📌 ACTION STEP: Think of your brand as a person. What personality traits would it have? How do you want to show up, or be perceived by your ideal client? Pick 3 adjectives to describe your brand
Here are some examples:
Approachable, warm, genuine
Bold, daring, exciting
Trustworthy, reliable, authoritative
Natural, sustainable, environmentally-conscious
Energetic, fun, vibrant
Elegant, sophisticated, upscale
Compassionate, nurturing, empathetic
Creative, cutting-edge, forward-thinking
Dependable, trustworthy, consistent
Lively, playful, entertaining
Step 2: Understand Colour Psychology
Here's a cool trick - have you ever noticed how different colours can evoke different emotions? This is called colour psychology, and it's a great way to express your brand personality.
For example, blue can be seen as calming and trustworthy, while red can be seen as exciting and bold.
Understanding colour psychology is a great starting point when choosing the right colours for your Wix website.
This is not about choosing your favourite colours. It's about being intentional about the colours you choose, making sure that they create the right atmosphere and vibe, and help your clients FEEL a certain way about your brand.
Here are some common colour associations:
Keep in mind that colour meanings can also vary based on culture and personal experiences. For example, in Western cultures, white is often associated with purity and innocence, while in some Eastern cultures, it's associated with mourning.
Step 3: Choose Your Main Brand Colour
Choosing your main brand colour is an important step in creating your website's colour palette. Start by considering the emotions you want to convey and your brand personality, then pick the colour that best fits those criteria.
Once you have a colour in mind, you can use a colour picker tool like Canva's Color Wheel or Adobe Color to get the exact shade, tone, or hue of your chosen colour. These tools will provide you with a unique code called a HEX code, which you can use to ensure consistency across all your branding materials.
You can download our free Canva brand board template to help you organise all of your brand colours in one place.
🔥 HOT TIP: Always use the exact same colour for your brand across all platforms.
The unique HEX code represents the exact shade, tone, and hue of your colour. Using the wrong HEX code or a slightly different shade can cause confusion and weaken your brand identity.
Step 4: Create Your Colour Palette
Once you've selected your main colour, you need to choose a colour palette. This is a selection of colours that work together.
Main brand colour:
Your main brand colour will be used most of the time, and people will begin to recognise your content online just from the colour you're using. Again, you need to be consistent and use the EXACT RIGHT colour by getting the HEX code.
Accent colour:
Your accent colour is used to grab peoples attention, for example as a call-to-action button on your website. This colour needs to be eye-catching and attention grabbing. You want it to stand out in contrast to your main colour.
Use colour theory
Consider using colours that are complementary or contrasting to your main brand colour. For example, if your main colour is blue, consider using an accent colour that is orange, which is complementary to blue as it sits at the opposite side of the colour wheel:
Then you can focus on finding the right shade of orange. As you can see from the example above we've gone for more of a peachy colour than bright orange.
The best place to look for colour inspiration is on Pinterest. Remember, you can always use the Coolors.co tool mentioned above to pick colours from an image to get the HEX codes.
Secondary colours:
You can have a two secondary colours in your colour palette too. Sometimes it can be completely different colours (like the green below) or it could be a darker or lighter shade of your main brand colour (like the dark teal below)
Neutral colours:
It's also really important to use neutral colours in your colour palette. One of the biggest design mistakes I see when people are DIY-ing their own website is that they don't use enough white space/ breathing room in their designs and they don't have enough neutral colours in their colour palette.
🔥 HOT TIP: As a rule of thumb, it's best to avoid pure white (HEX code: # FFFFFF) and pure black (HEX code # 000000) because these colours are too harsh on the eye. Opt for an off-white and a very dark grey instead.
Remember to download our free Canva brand board template to help you organise all of your brand colours in one place.
Step 5: Test Your Colours
Once you've chosen your main brand colour and played around with colour combinations, it is time to test them on your Wix website!
Add a hidden page to your Wix website and use that to experiment on. Remember to check that the copy is clear and easy to read, and that your colours look good on mobile/ desktop.
Step 6: Add Your Colours To Your Wix Site
Once you're happy with your brand colour palette, you can apply them to your whole website by editing them under 'Themes'. It's quick and easy to do, but it's important to note that each block of colour in this Wix palette that you change will affect your WHOLE website. Give yourself time to check each page as you may need to manually change some of the colours.
If anything happens and you accidentally 'mess up your website's design', you can undo any mistakes using the Wix Site History Tool.
Step 7: Create Your Own Brand Board on Canva
Now that you've chosen your brand colours and created a unique and memorable brand palette, it's time to organise and document all your branding elements in one place.
We recommend using a brand board to keep everything visually consistent and easily accessible.
Here's how to create your own brand board using the Canva template we've provided:
Click the 'get template' button in your email
Customise the template to your liking by adding your brand colours (including the HEX codes)
Save your brand board in a folder on Canva that you can come back to later
And it's as simple as that! By choosing the right colours for your Wix website you're creating a strong and memorable brand identity, and you're playing an intentional role in choosing how your audience perceives your brand.
And there's more to come! In the rest of the series, we'll be diving into logos, fonts, and imagery to complete your brand board. So make sure you've signed up to our mailing list and keep an eye out for our emails.
I'll say it louder for the folks at the back: There's more to come! In the rest of the series, we'll be diving into logos, fonts, and imagery to complete your brand board. So make sure you've signed up to our mailing list and keep an eye out for our emails... you don't want to miss these! 👀
Hi there! I'm Caitlin Pieters, a Wix Website Design & Brand Strategist with over 2 decades of experience working in the creative industry. Originally from South Africa, I'm now based in London, UK.
I'm passionate supporting small business owners and helping them build brilliant Wix websites that connect and convert. In 2017, I started my own journey into self-employment to work with purpose-led business owners and help them create websites that truly reflect who they are. I believe in the power of collaboration and am committed to helping more women to achieve financial security through self-employment.
When I'm not designing websites, I love spending time outdoors. You can connect with me on LinkedIn to learn more.
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