TemplateMonster Infographic. Purple Color in Web Design: Psychology, Effect, Examples, Infographics

Not only fashion dictates the most trending colors of the year. In web design, the right choice of your site’s color scheme pre-defines how reputable you will look in the eyes of your clients. Now, when the biggest half of the year 2016 is left behind, we already know what colors are in the biggest demand among the web audience.

Purple can be truly called one of the most popular color choices of the year. But what stands behind it? What meaning does it bare? And what effect does a website designed in purple hues has on the users? Let’s find out answers to these and other questions in this blog post.

Why should we care about color

In order to let you benefit from the tips and examples that we provide below, let’s first find out what exactly color psychology is, and why it is so important for web masters.
Color psychology is a science that studies the impact colors have on the human mind. Why is it so important for web designers to learn this science? Well, everyone who deals with web design and development works with colors. An inappropriate use of the latter can result in the wrong opinion/reflection of your target audience.
Color psychology is a must-study field that people of different professions should know. If you are not a web master but, say, a business owner who wants to get his brand online, learning the basics of the use of color in the presentation of your project is critical. To the biggest extent, the success of your web resource heavily depends on the colors into which it’s painted.

Let’s imagine the following situation. Someone handed you a smartphone, which you have been dreaming about since its release. You would have exploded with excitement, right? Definitely! But what if it is designed in your most-hated color? Or even worse! It is made up of hues that do not match one another at all, say green and orange. You might be somewhat less excited, right?

The same situation occurs in web design. The colors that you choose for your web project have an emotional impact on your audience. As per Kissmetrics, when you look at a certain color, your eyes send a message to the hypothalamus, which further on sends signals to the pituitary gland and onto thyroid glands. All these signals result in the release of hormones that cause the change of our mood and behavior.

Scientists have proven that different colors evoke different emotions, positive or negative feelings. A site visitor needs 90 seconds on the average to form an opinion about your website. Further on, 60% of a user’s interaction with your site is caused by the design color alone.
So, where should one use color? In this article, we focus on the use of color in web design, its color scheme, typography, graphics, backgrounds, logos, banners, CTAs, and popups. A properly chosen shade of purple (we will talk about this a little bit later in this post) help you better communicate your objectives to the audience, and even motivate them to take an action.

Designing your website from scratch can be costly and time-consuming. That’s why, a number of brands give their preference to ready-made designs. Especially taking into account the fact that theme providers try to make their products match the latest web criteria, and design both multi-purpose and niche-specific templates that are intended to cause certain reflections from your audience. TemplateMonster’s themes are always built in a professional manner and with trendy style in mind.
Among a rich variety of website templates that the company launches, you can come across a selection of purple designs as well. For example, take a look at Style Park WordPress theme. Built in metro style, its layout features multi-colored content blocks, which draw the users’ attention to your featured content. Vivid banners made in purple hues can be also located on the page.

Purple is a rich hue that is associated with prosperity and wealth. It makes this fashion blog theme look far more refined and stylish, appealing to the true fashionistas. The main navigation panel, CTAs, and purple widgetized areas bring a special charm to the layout.
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The color also has religious connotations with Easter and purple robes. If you visit Christian websites, you will likely find many using the shades of purple. If we refer to the Bible, we can find out that purple bares a symbolic meaning of royalty and wealth. This is the color that Jesus had on when Roman soldiers beat and crucified him.

Purple is also strongly associated with nature through flowers and plants, like lavender, orchids, and others. This is also the color that we can meet on travel sites. For example, take a look at the following ready-made design. Travel Agency Responsive WordPress Theme uses soft purple hues in the header and footer areas. Combined with coral CTAs and neat icons enhanced with the hover effect, purple makes the users feel relaxed and browse the site’s content unintentionally.
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Depending on the color that purple is combined with, it can create a different mood. For example, using purple with red you will create the feeling of warmth on your web page. Light purple hues evoke romantic emotions, which make your website look more feminine and tender. If you want your site to appear more masculine, opt for darker hues of purple. To create an eye-catching effect, combine purple with yellow.

The color is also often used in logo designs of the world-known companies. Yahoo! and Los Angeles Lakers have designed their logos in purple.

The logo of DJ Responsive WordPress Theme is also made in purple hues. Additionally, the main navigation panel, fonts, icons, and other elements look contracting on the dark background of the theme’s layout.
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Purple Infographics

Purple-colored designs are mostly oriented on websites for female audience of the 18-25 age groups. That’s why, the biggest part of such web resources can be found in the beauty and fashion industries. Ladies consider purple as a sexy and extremely rebellious hue. So, you can often find it on night club websites.

For the male audience, purple looks less captivating. Male-oriented websites tend to be more concise, so using tender purple color will be at least inappropriate. There is an option to refresh masculine designs with dark purples, however you should be especially attentive not to overdo with it.

TemplateMonster’s creative team has recently launched a series of color-inspired infographics. Purple is one of them. In the infographics given below you can see how different groups of people from different races react on purple web design elements. Also, there is a list of the most popular combinations of purple with other colors, and the effect each of them has on the web audience.

As it’s been already mentioned above, purple is in greater demand among the feminine audience. So, it is the preferred color of fashion and beauty web resources. However, this doesn’t mean that you will never find purple on websites belonging to other industries. Here is how purple is used in different industries.

Business

Morris Miselowski, the owner of the Business Futurist website, used light purple hues in the main navigation panel, CTAs, backgrounds, and headlines of the layout. When browsing the site’s pages, you will see astro motives in the backgrounds. The site is also enhanced with a parallax scrolling effect, which makes you get literally immersed into the atmosphere of the business.

Web design studio

Thameem, a creative web designer from India, also gives preference to the purple elements on his official web page. Thams Designs features a large purple hero area, with a selection of neat ghost icons placed on top of it. The layout is built in purple and black colors, which bring a serious, manly look to the web page.

Software

The name of the following website speaks for itself. The Purple Bunny uses purple hues in the majority of its design elements. A large header area made in purples welcomes the users in. When clicking a hamburger menu icons, people will see a fly-out panel that highlights the selected item with a rounded purple element. When browsing portfolio, the users will see an image hover effect designed in purple hues.

Moreover, you can meet purple in the designs of websites belonging to other business niches, like:

• education (on such web resources purple is being mainly used with the purpose to inspire the audience);
• finance (to deliver the meaning of wealth and prosperity);
• healthcare (to make the users feel relieved);
• entertainment (to bring a passionate and sexy look to the web resource).

Using contrasting colors on your website is a great way of drawing the users’ attention to the key points that you share on your web resource. ECommerce websites use this technique to their advantage. You can judge it for yourself. What color of fonts or other elements will attract you more – black or purple? I believe that your answer would be purple. And you will be absolutely right. The users’ eye is adjusted to reading texts written in dark typography. Words and phrases highlighted in brighter colors automatically capture more attention.
Just like any other shade in the color wheel, purple has a number of variations, like:

• cool blue-purple that is commonly used on business and financial websites;
• warm red-purple can bring special charm to the creative online projects;
• deep purple will bring a calm and relaxing feeling to religious sires;
• bright and cheerful purples will entertain the visitors of family and kids web projects.

Business niches that will hardly give preference to purple color in their web designs are food- and drink-related online resources. To grow the users’ interest in their dishes and stimulate appetite, such web projects are more likely to build their layouts in appetizing yellow, red and green. The same deals with agriculture web resources.

Variations of Purple

Considered to be a natural color, purple has a number of other variations (in addition to all the aforementioned ones). Depending on the message that you would like to deliver on your web resource, you can opt for the following shapes of purple:

• Deep purple is a powerful color that is referred to arrogance and ruthlessness.
• Plum is a mix of red and purple. This is an honorable color that is commonly associated with family traditions.
• Amethyst deals with mystic. This is the color of evolved soul.
• Lavender is a light purple color with a bluish hue. Its bares the meaning of fragility and sensitivity, which is a perfect match for websites targeting female audience.
• Lilac is a pale purple with deep concentration of pink hues, delivering glamorous, chick feeling.
• Mauve is somewhere in between lavender and lilac hues. Generally considered as the color of justice, it will perform well on law and attorney websites,

Wrapping up

We hope that the all tips and examples considering the use of purple color in web design will help you deliver the desired messages via your web page effectively. As you can see, there are dozens of shades of purple, as well as the meanings that it bears. Depending on your business niche and the audience that you target, you can choose from darker or brighter hues.
Purple is the color that is intended not only for ladies, though it attracts female audience far better than males. Depending on the shade of purple that your select, you can add it to business, religious, software, and a whole lot of other we projects. Just bear in memory what impact you would like it to have on the web users, and keep on unleashing the potential of your website to the fullest!