I still vividly remember one of my earliest art classes when, as a small, eager child, I was presented with a range of bright colored paints. I recall the delight of seeing primary colors mix into secondary colors for the first time, and I reasoned that if two colors could make one beautiful new color, all the colors together must make something even better! It was entirely disappointing to realize that no matter how I went about it, if I used all the colors at my disposal I inevitably ended up with a kacky color that can only be called “BLECH”. Years later, as a fledgling web designer, I experienced something of the same process over again. As I was learning I fell into the inevitable trap of using too many colors, or combining them in the wrong way, only to end up with something a little “BLECH”. I set about trying to learn how to create color schemes for the web, and I found a lot of fascinating information about color theory. I read about hues, tints, shades, tones, saturation and brightness, as well as analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary and compound color schemes. The basic RGB color palette However without a practical framework to slot that information into, I found that at first it didn't get me all that much closer to creating well colored website design. In fact it was only after I started creating solid color schemes through pure trial and error that all the color theory I had read started to make sense. In the process, I picked up some “safety guidelines” for website color schemes that I wish I'd known at the beginning. When you first get started, full color theory isn't necessarily what you need up front. Often you need to get the ball rolling with something a little less theoretical, and a little more “paint by numbers”. In this tutorial I’ll be sharing with you six sure fire, “can’t go wrong” guidelines you can follow to get a foundational grasp on working with color in web design. These are not rules, as you'll create many color schemes in your career that will go in a completely different direction. Rather, they're a starting point, a safety guide for how to survive your first outings in the web design world without ever running into “BLECH”
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