10 Website Color Schemes Trends for 2021

What has to be taken into consideration when designing a website? Architecture, domain name, hosting, backend, theme, panels. Strange as it may seem, a color scheme plays an integral role. At the same time, many people often delay the choice of it.

But the color choices have a big impact on every user and create a certain impression of the brand. In fact, research shows that people judge websites within 90 seconds of exposure. And the lion’s share of that judgment is based on color alone.

Choosing the right colors can enhance readability and increase comprehension of project goals. According to HubSpot, 46% of people rank the design of a website as the number one factor in determining the credibility of a company. Colors are the main component of the design.

But how to choose the color scheme? It has to reflect the project idea and be aligned with the brand. Besides, the choice has to be based on trends. We’ll tell you which color schemes will be trending in 2021.

Orange, Pink and Red Tones

Retro style is making a big comeback in clothing, design, and marketing overall. It had an impact on the choice of the color scheme as well. Many top brands start using the popular color of the 80s-90s on their websites.

These tones create a throwback vibe, which has a huge influence on many consumers today. These are warm colors, which give people a nostalgia for their childhood and adolescent years.

It’s worthy of note that another trend is implemented here – a gradient. Tones are interblended well, which creates the effect of image smoothness and depth.

Prevailing Pink

Stereotypes say that pink is a color for a female audience. Modern trends say that stereotypes have no place in design. That is why many brands use a pink shade to form the website frame.

One of the examples is the Unleashed website, which got on Awwwards ratings. Pink shade creates a calm atmosphere and doesn’t put stress on the user’s eyes. Yellow tones perfectly match and allow text to stand out against the bright color.

Aside from yellow, a lot of brands make black a second color. Why? This is the simplest choice that no user would find inappropriate. Black is a universal color so it can be used in cases when you can’t find a good color palette.

Black on Black

What if we use black not as an addition, but as an only color for the entire website? Brands that aren’t afraid to try things out have adopted this approach a long time ago. The result is users’ admiration.

One of the examples is a home page of French garment manufacturer JY BH. As you can see in the image, full use of black with a small gradient perfectly conveys the company’s idea – the creation of elegant and classic style.

Nonetheless, using this color scheme requires special skills. It’s very important to create the right gradients and select the other design elements (font, animation, images etc.).

Sea Foam combining with Mint

Blue color has been trending for a long time. It was striking dark blue or light blue shade (Facebook, Twitter). It’s quite enough for social media. But if we talk about the full-scale brands that sell products or services, then we need a more attractive website. For this purpose, designers started adding gradients. One of the best combinations today is sea colors with a slight addition of mint shades.

Why are they so popular? The answer lies in psychology. Shades of blue are the best in calming people and favorably influencing their behavior. This is one of the reasons why you see a huge number of websites with this color scheme.

Black, white, grey

Simple classic and elegance. Certainly, there will be critics, who will blame such a designer for lack of taste. However, it doesn’t stop you from using this color scheme for your website. Especially if it’s in keeping with project policy.

The best example of such a website is Apple. This color scheme became its calling card. It’s used for online presentations of the majority of the company’s products. The most important thing is that these colors are perfectly aligned with Apple’s policy.

For instance, if your website is aimed at the premium audience, then you can boldly use these colors.

Thereat, don’t be afraid of criticism. As a rule, users perceive these sites well due to their simplicity. Such a color scheme is just timeless even if it’s not so special and unique.

Grey and Blue

Only two colors, without any gradients. Why are they trending? This is very outside of the box. Blue shades are very frequently used as a self-sustained color scheme or with a green shade. At the same time, the grey color rarely appears in color schemes (an exception is as a gradient for black).

When the user visits such a website, he understands right away that he’s in for something unusual and worthy of attention. So he gladly stays, studies the materials, and possibly buys the product (service).

The key feature of this color scheme is that it doesn’t require special skills in graphic and web design. You can actualize it as you like and you’ll get quite an attractive result anyway.

Futuristic Color Schemes

The isometric trend was just gradually developing for some time. Today it resulted in full-scale futuristic color schemes that can be frequently seen on the trend graphic design of websites. As a rule, it consists of three colors:

• deep blue;
• deep purple;
• hot pink.

Sometimes you can see additions of bright green or yellow colors. The result is very fresh, multidimensional, and deep.

Futuristic color schemes and designs will be on trend next year. They can change a lot of solutions in design overall. In other words, we can see the materialization of those colors, which directors of futuristic movies and cartoons loved to use.

Classic blue

We have already mentioned blue color three times in this article. Apart from the fact that it will appear combining with other shades, designers use it as actively without additions. The only thing that you can see as addition is gradients and white color for fonts.

One of the examples of websites that implemented such an approach is a web design studio Oino.

Why is this color scheme trending? As was already mentioned, the blue color has a very positive impact on a person psychologically. Moreover, an incredible number of websites with this color scheme has been created for the last 10 years. The user got used to this approach. When visiting these websites, he feels like he has already been here and definitely liked something.

Natural Shades

Environment preservation has become something like a trend recently. Why?

1. More and more celebrities are talking about it.
2. Manufacturers of various products meet this requirement.
3. Mass media tells more information about it.

At the very least, we started to notice the consequences of harmful influence on the environment. Today many people think that it’s their duty to do something useful for nature.

That is why the use of respective colors (as a rule, green, yellow, red, and sea) in web design got a new meaning. In particular, designers address human psychology again.

Man loves nature and he has always admired it. That is why when seeing similar colors on some products or websites, he most commonly quickly gives the brand a credit.

Grey, Soft Yellow, and Deep Green

It’s pretty hard to imagine the combination of these three colors in one palette. Why? Because we haven’t noticed it so often before. It is indeed the case. This trend is only emerging. Nevertheless, some projects are already skillfully using it.

At first glimpse, this color palette is a little stodgy and not so attractive. You get the impression that it’s outdated. But this exact aspect is its particularity. At some point, the user realizes that he really hasn’t seen anything like this before. The project gets its uniqueness and earns a special attitude.

How to Choose a Color Scheme?

We demonstrated ten trends of color combinations for the coming year. However, firstly, it doesn’t mean that you can choose only one of them. Secondly, there’s still a question about how to determine the best color scheme for your project?

1. Choose the prevailing color.
2. Select good combinations.
3. Define the background color.

Many people have a question concerning the second point. If you can’t determine the colors yourself, then you have two options. The first one is to seek advice from qualified web designers, who will create the best combination for your project. The second one is to use web tools (for instance, Adobe Color CC).

Conclusion

Many trends are changing in all spheres today. Graphic design has been no exception. Color schemes are the least stable design component. That is why it’s necessary to monitor them most of all.

If you’re planning to carry out rebranding in 2021, then the change of color scheme has to be the first thing to do. This step will refresh your project and will make users look at it from another perspective.