UX DESIGN

Colour is one of the most powerful tools in a designer’s toolkit. It’s not just about aesthetics—colour has the ability to influence emotions, convey meaning, and drive actions. By using advanced colour schemes, designers can create experiences that evoke specific feelings, guide users toward certain actions, and reinforce brand identity.

Colour theory is more than just picking hues that look good together. It involves understanding the psychology of colour, how different colours interact, and how they can be applied strategically in UX/UI design. In this article, we’ll explore advanced colour theory concepts, including colour schemes, colour harmony, and the emotional impact of colour. If you’re serious about mastering colour in design, our Advanced UX/UI Design Course offers in-depth training on how to use colour to create engaging and effective digital experiences.

Understanding Colour Theory: The Basics

Before diving into advanced concepts, it’s important to have a solid understanding of colour theory. Colour theory is the body of practical guidance on how colours mix, match, and contrast with each other. It’s grounded in the colour wheel, which organizes colours into a circular format based on their relationships.

What it is: Colour theory explains how colours interact and how to create aesthetically pleasing combinations. The primary categories include:

Primary colours: Red, blue, and yellow.
Secondary colours: Created by mixing primary colours (e.g., orange, green, purple).
Tertiary colours: Created by mixing primary and secondary colours (e.g., red-orange, yellow-green).

Why it matters: Understanding basic colour theory helps designers create harmonious and visually appealing palettes. But beyond aesthetics, it allows designers to leverage the psychological impact of colour—how different hues influence mood, behaviour, and decision-making.

Example: In the context of a productivity app, using cool colours like blue or green can create a calming, focused atmosphere, while warm colours like red or orange can evoke urgency or excitement.

Design Insight: Start with a basic understanding of the colour wheel and move into more advanced applications like complementary, analogous, and triadic colour schemes, which we’ll cover next.

Advanced Colour Schemes: Creating Harmonious and Impactful Designs

Colour schemes are systematic arrangements of colours that work well together. By applying advanced colour schemes, you can create designs that are not only visually appealing but also purposeful. Here are some key advanced colour schemes:

Complementary Colours: Colours directly opposite each other on the colour wheel (e.g., blue and orange). These create high contrast and are often used to highlight important elements like CTAs.
Analogous Colours: Colours next to each other on the colour wheel (e.g., blue, blue-green, green). These create harmonious and subtle transitions, ideal for creating a calm and cohesive feel.
Triadic Colours: Three colours evenly spaced around the colour wheel (e.g., red, blue, yellow). Triadic schemes are bold and dynamic, often used in designs that require energy and movement.
Split-Complementary Colours: A variation of the complementary scheme, using a base colour and two adjacent colours of its complement (e.g., blue, orange-red, and yellow-orange). This offers contrast while being less intense than a traditional complementary scheme.

Why it matters: Advanced colour schemes allow designers to create balance, contrast, and visual interest in their designs. The right colour scheme can also influence user actions by drawing attention to specific elements.

Example: In a landing page for an e-commerce site, you might use a complementary scheme of blue and orange. The page might have a calm, professional feel with blue backgrounds and headers, but the bright orange “Buy Now” button stands out, drawing attention to the key action.

Design Insight: Choose your colour schemes based on the emotion and action you want to evoke. Complementary schemes create bold contrast, while analogous schemes offer harmony and subtlety. Triadic schemes can energise the design, while split-complementary schemes offer the best of both worlds.

Colour Psychology: The Emotional Impact of Colour

Colour is not just visual—it’s deeply psychological. Different colours evoke different emotions and can influence user behaviour. Understanding the emotional impact of colour is essential for creating designs that resonate with users on a deeper level.

What it is: Colour psychology is the study of how colours affect human emotions and behaviour. For example:

Red: Excitement, passion, urgency (often used for warnings or promotions).
Blue: Calm, trust, professionalism (often used in corporate or financial settings).
Yellow: Optimism, warmth, attention-grabbing (often used to evoke happiness or energy).
Green: Health, balance, relaxation (often used in wellness or environmental brands).
Black: Sophistication, luxury, power (often used in high-end products).

Why it matters: Colour can have a profound impact on how users feel about your product or brand. It can also influence actions—whether that’s making users feel comfortable enough to sign up, excited to make a purchase, or focused enough to complete a task.

Example: A fintech app might use blue to instill a sense of trust and reliability, while a fitness app might use orange or red to create a sense of energy and motivation.

Design Insight: Use colour strategically to influence how users feel and behave. When designing CTAs, for instance, red or orange can create a sense of urgency, while blue or green might evoke calm and trust, encouraging users to complete their tasks.

Beyond aesthetics and emotion, colour can be a powerful tool for guiding user actions and improving usability. Colour can direct attention, create emphasis, and visually separate different sections of a layout. This is critical in UX design, where users need to quickly understand where to click, what to read, and how to navigate a product.

What it is: Using colour to guide actions involves applying contrast, emphasis, and consistency to direct user attention. The right use of colour can make important elements stand out, while less important elements can recede into the background.

Why it matters: Colour can significantly affect conversion rates by guiding users to take specific actions. A well-placed, brightly coloured button will attract attention, while too many competing colours can overwhelm users and cause confusion.

Example: A sign-up form might use a grey background with minimal contrast, but the “Submit” button could be a bright, contrasting colour (like orange or red) to draw attention. This use of colour hierarchy ensures users focus on the primary action.

Design Insight: Use colour contrast to emphasize important actions. But be careful not to overwhelm users with too many competing colours. Keep the overall palette simple and use high-contrast colours sparingly to highlight the most important elements.

Accessibility in Colour Design: Ensuring Inclusivity

When using colour in design, it’s essential to consider accessibility. Colour blindness and visual impairments can affect how users perceive your design, so it’s crucial to ensure that colour is not the only means of conveying information.

What it is: Accessible colour design involves creating colour schemes and contrast levels that are usable by people with different visual impairments, including colour blindness. Tools like colour contrast checkers help designers ensure that text and important elements are distinguishable from the background.

Why it matters: Accessibility is a key consideration in UX design, ensuring that your product can be used by as many people as possible. Ignoring accessibility can lead to a poor experience for users with visual impairments and may exclude a significant portion of your audience.

Example: A traffic light-style notification system might use red, yellow, and green to indicate different statuses. But for users with colour blindness, these colours may be indistinguishable. Adding text labels or icons alongside the colours ensures that the message is clear, regardless of the user’s ability to perceive colour.

Design Insight: Always ensure sufficient contrast between text and background colours. Avoid relying solely on colour to convey meaning—use additional cues like icons, labels, or patterns to ensure accessibility for all users.

Conclusion: The Power of Colour in UX/UI Design

Colour is one of the most powerful tools in UX/UI design, with the ability to influence emotions, guide actions, and reinforce brand identity. By mastering advanced colour theory, you can create designs that not only look beautiful but also evoke the right emotions and drive user behaviour.

To dive deeper into the practical application of colour theory in design, our Advanced UX/UI Design Course offers a comprehensive exploration of colour schemes, psychology, and accessibility, providing hands-on exercises to help you master the use of colour in your digital products.

Cross-Reference to Previous Articles: For more insights into visual design principles that complement colour theory, check out our article on Advanced Visual Design Principles, which explores concepts like visual hierarchy and balance. To learn about how these principles come together to create cohesive service experiences, see our article on Service Design Thinking.

Colour Theory and Application: Using Advanced Colour Schemes to Impact Emotions and Actions