How Does Red Color in Web Design Attract Your Visitors
The world around us is made of colors. Psychologically, the way a human mind reacts to different colors varies. While cool colors make us feel relaxed and tranquil, warm colors make us more energized and motivated. In one of our previous publications, we have already spoken about the use of purple color in web design and the effect it has on the audience. Now, let’s get concentrated on how to design your site in red properly.
Web designs are made of colors. The choice of the color scheme depends on the effect that you want your web resource have on visitors, the emotions that you want it to evoke, as well as the actions that you want your audience to take. The science that deals with providing you with a deeper understanding of the users’ reactions to colors is called color psychology. With its help, you attain a better understanding of the importance of web design. It also reveals the way different colors applied to different elements of your site’s design influence the users’ behavior. A clear understanding of color psychology is essential to everyone who is somehow related to web design and development.
Red is the brightest and the hottest hue in the color wheel. When added to a site’s layout, it simply cannot be left unspotted. It highlights the page while bringing energy and power to it. This is also a strong motivational color, which calls the users to take an action. Red is also associated with such opposite emotions as love and hate. Owing to the strong effect that red color has on the users, it is being widely used by ecommerce sites. It is also popular among web resources related to love and romance, charity, sports, fashion, food, design, and travel. Red is more powerful than orange, its neighbor in the color wheel. So, if you give preference to warm colors and want your audience to intact with your web resource actively, then red will be your best choice.
Provided that red in the strongest hue in the color wheel, it’s important not to use too much of it. Otherwise your website will look too aggressive. Red color can be also a sign of danger and a signal to stop. An exaggerated use of red can have an opposite effect on your audience. Instead of looking energetic and captivating, it may get appalling. A golden rule that we recommend you to follow is keeping your site’s layout well-balanced, with the clearly-defined accents. In order not to speak without a proof, let’s consider several examples of designs that make use of red color.
Different Types of Red in Web Design
Red can convey different meanings and moods. To a great degree, the emotions that the color will evoke are associated with the shade that is used within a specific interface.
Bright red is attention-grabbing. It is commonly applied to CTA buttons. When used within a clean and minimalist interface, it brings a feeling of modernity and professionalism to the design. A customer experience agency dubbed RED uses the respective hue in their logo, navigation elements, icons, brand names, and headlines, which are opposed to fair backgrounds and surrounded with whitespace.
If you want to evoke the feelings of warms and reliability, then dark red will be your best option. This is the hue that is commonly used by websites representing theatres featuring red-colored curtain and cozy red seats. RedTheatre website is a bright example of dark red being used within an existing web resource. The site’s owners have chosen the hue to bring charming look to its backgrounds. Featured in capitalized headlines, dark red captivates the users’ eye.
Combinations of Red with Other Colors in Web Design
When used in combination with different colors, red can convey different meanings. The mix of red with green and yellow is the perfect choice for food-related web projects. Just recollect McDonalds logo. What colors does it feature? Those are appetizing, mouthwatering red and yellow luring the users’ eye and making them order something really tasty to try.
The avid fans of minimalism in web design can opt for a combination of red with black and white. Such designs look classy. When spiced up with vivid red hues, they bring a modern look and feel to the sites they represent. Newmusicusa.org looks clean and elegant. Dark gray and white color scheme is spiced up with catching bright red hues, which guide the audience to CTAs.
Where & How to Use Red Color?
This is probably the first question that came to your mind when you saw this post. Red can be used in literally every element of your site’s design, provided that it is applied wisely. If you are new to the topic and need qualified assistance on how to use red color in your site’s design is a way that triggers the users’ curiosity, then you can make use of ready-made designs that combine all of the most proven techniques and approaches of using the respective color in practice. For example, you can make use of red hues in order to highlight your site’s logo. The developers of IronMass used orange-red hues in order to bring the logo and CTAs in the spotlight. Placed on dark-colored backgrounds, red elements look very catching and outstanding, bringing a masculine and powerful look to this sport-related design.
42 Windows, a design suited for interior and furniture sites, features a clean and minimalist design. Its logo is also highlighted with red hues, which is intended to make the brand’s image stick to the users’ memory. The layout is specious and quick to scan. Vivid red CTAs lure the visitors’ attention, motivating them to take an action and click the button. With the purpose to highlight the company’s services, the front page includes a contrasting content block opposed to a bold red background. The design’s footer also looks contrasting, thus guiding the audience to the brand’s social media profiles.
Red is one of the most popular colors among food-related sites. When combined with yellow and green, it provides for an appealing, appetizing look. The following design that we would like you to take a look at is the one representing a brewery. Unlike the previously described layouts, this one makes use of lighter shades of red over light-grey backgrounds. In addition to being featured in backgrounds, red is also used to highlight price tags of the products that a site sells. Pastel shades of red create a calm and relaxing atmosphere on the page, making the users feel tranquil as they tipple beer.
With so much being already said and demonstrated, there are still lots of key points regarding the proper use of red color in web design worth considering. In order not to overwhelm you with long texts, let’s take a closer look at the following infographics containing everything that a web designer needs to know about red.
Red Color in Web Design Infographics
Just like any other color, red targets a specific kind of audience. This is the hue that appeals to women and children better than men. And that’s clear why. Red is a warm color, which is traditionally more popular with females. Men also enjoy the hue, but women are more likely to take an action when they see it on a website.
Being commonly used in CTAs, the shades of red that you select also play a significant role in targeting different audiences. This, bright red colors will appeal to impulse buyers, whereas sifter hues are luring to traditional shoppers and those of them who are on a budget. At this point it’s also worth to mention that before choosing the color scheme for your site, make sure that you know your audience. Ladies are common guests to web pages related to decor, fashion, flowers, beauty, gifts, hobbies, crafts, and stuff like that. So, building such sites in red you will never lose. As per the male audience, red will attract their attention on cars and sports sites. Travel and food sites target both male and female audiences, so certain design elements painted red can be featured there as well.
While there are a number of sites that encourage the use of red, there are certain niches where the use of red should be avoided. These include energy, finance and airlines. Cool colors are the optimal choice for such resources (say, green and blue). It’s up to you to decide whether to use red on household sites or not. It’s neither very much appreciated nor strictly forbidden. If you want to paint certain areas of your web project into red, our advice is to run A/b tests first.
Basically, these are the main points covered it he infographics. Take a closer look at the visualized version of this data below.
More Examples
It’s always a good idea to learn from professionals. Let’s take a look at other stunning examples of trusted web resources making use of the color red.
This is probably one of the first sites that comes to our mind when talking about the use of red in design. Delivering a festive, cheerful and optimistic mood, the Coca-Cola site features red in almost all of its elements. Starting from the popular logo and CTAs and ending with the menu, header and footer, the design looks contrasting and attention-grabbing. Too much red, you may say? Well, probably yes. Still, here red design elements are used in a way makes you feel optimistic.
The site uses several shades of red and pink within one layout. Dark reds are combined with light pink colors, bringing an energetic atmosphere to the design. It evokes the desire to browse the pages in search of the optimal solution. Whitespace brings certain balance to the content presentation. White, readable fonts placed on red and pink banners look contrasting, thus attention-grabbing. This site perfectly demonstrates how red white and dark gray can be used within one interface.
The site looks very creative. When landing on the page, your attention is captivated by a bold text logo, featuring video integration. Such a design will be an optimal option for those of you who are not afraid of experiments. Here cool and warm hues are mixed with one another. Pink is used with red in the backgrounds. Blue colors are combined with purple. Warm orange CTAs are opposed to vivid coral backgrounds. While playing with contrast, the site’s designers have created an unparalleled atmosphere on the page, which lures to both males and females.
Built in dark tones, the site uses light red colors in CTAs and headlines. Here integrated video backgrounds are used to get the audience immersed into interactive browsing. Not only texts, but also images are painted red, thus perfectly harmonizing with the rest of the design elements. Though the site is dark-colored, it looks rather clean. While and red typography provides for better readability of the content. In such a way, the website can become a cool source of inspiration to those web designers who need to create information heavy yet user-friendly web projects. It also provides for impressive storytelling.
There are so many colors to use on your site. All of them bear different meanings and evoke various emotions. Each color has its own purpose of use and even audience. Keep this in mind when working on the color scheme for your web resource.
We hope that this post about the use of red color is web design was useful to you and you have found some tricks that can be applied to your own web projects. Don’t forget to grab an e-book written by our specialists on SEO and marketing. It’s free, as a thank you for showing interest to our blog posts! Have a nice day and return for more!
