Colors & palettes

[dubiousdisc]

I'm curious, what colors do you like to use in layouts? Are some of them always the same from site to site, or do you always change? Do you have a favorite palette that seems to pop up frequently? Generally, what are your preferences and sensibilities about colors in webdesigning?

[SnowRayjah]

I prefer light colors. I'm a very big fan of pastels. I'll use anything I think looks "soft." I can use darker colors but I don't enjoy them. I tend to be a really big fan of greyscale though. ;w; I try not to use ice blues all the time, it's my favorite color so I'm really bias about it.

[Mikari]

I like light colors best, pastels and especially blue. I'm not a fan of green and red. I sometimes pick a layout image and go with what colors match it best. The exception to my light color preference is black. I like using black combined with a lighter color that stands out. I also like gray and desaturated "metallic" blue and silver.

[Destinie]

This is interesting because I was just speaking about this with someone last night! I usually use a Triad-based color pallet. So I may pick one or two colors that are similar (ex: blue and light blue) and choose a third color that pops (maybe a gold or red). I try to stay away from classic complementary color combinations (IE: Blue and Orange). Eek. Working in the industry that I am in, the customer LOOOVES Blue. Everything is blue blue blue. I used to love Blue in design but I feel like it's been driving me crazy and I don't even want to look at it anymore. XD Blue is still a good color but it's hard to find people who do the color balance well.

I think that's the hardest part of the design process for me: picking out the colors.

[Mikari]

I looked through my layout archive and thought back at how I picked out those colors. In a few occasions I thought about using a different color that I haven't used before simply to do something out of my usual palette. Though most often it's about the image, finding an image I like and figuring out the colors as I got along obtaining them from the image. What about everyone here? Do you pick the image first or the palette first?

[Sarah]

I have a lot of layouts that are either black/grayscale or brown. I'm not even particularly fond of those colors either. Well, I do like black, but I think I use it on too many of my sites so I am getting tired of it in that respect. I guess those colors are just the easiest for me to work with. I do like lighter colors and try to use them when I can. And I also try to make one layout different from the previous one, whenever I change a site's look. EVE is a good example of that; her previous layout was black and the current one is light yellow. In a perfect world, all of my sites would be different colors!

Mikari, to answer your question, I pick the image first! I also get the color palette from the image I am working with. :)

[dubiousdisc]

Destinie: Everyone's favorite color seems to be blue. I don't know...I don't hate it, but I am mostly indifferent to it? XD I actually love blue and orange in contexts that are not webdesigning, but ages of "every OS/website/everything ever on a screen is blue and orange" made me very wary of using them on a website. They make me feel as if I'm building some boring corporate website. Or Windows XP. I don't know.

Mikari: I often make the artwork I use on my layouts, so in that case I pick the artwork's colors first, check if they work with the layout I want to make, and then make both the artwork and the layout following the color scheme I chose. When working with someone else's artwork, I play around with it until I get a color scheme that I like, which might not be the one in the original picture at all though.

As for my approach...
No one believes me when I say that my favorite colors are actually all in the grey range, but it's true. Both in artwork and in webdesigning, I tend to start from a grey that has a hint of color, because then when I add actual color it looks much brighter and pops more. Said that, I do have a palette of favorite colors I always fall back on, and even when I stray from them I realize that one of them is usually still there, haha. I do try to change, though. I try to pick colors based on the general feel of the website.

In terms of colors that always pop around, other than the aforementioned colored grey and the ubiquitous black, I guess I use a lot of teal, yellow and red.

[Mikari]

Lately I've used some art for layouts too, though my art is nothing impressive. The colors are based on the character and the background is something that makes the character stand out. I don't usually plan for a layout when I draw. It's just something that I might decide later when looking through the pics. The only exception was Way Cool where I made the pic specifically for a layout.

[Cherri]

I generally use whatever colors are in the image I am using. So they all turn out different colors. I like light pink, red and teal just not all together. I don't mind blue just not a huge fan and I don't really use it either unless the image turns out blue. I also have a very hard time with colors and often get Snow to help me. Of course I pick on her about how she can't match colors but it reality it's me who can't. Colors are really a difficult part of layout making for me.

[Todd]

I use a lot of red in layouts. No idea why...