The colors you use can add a great deal to your website. I think of the colors and the design as the frame around the picture.

Years ago I did an art show with a friend of mine. In preparing for the show, we took our paintings to a framing shop one day. What a lesson that was! I learned in a very visual way what an amazing difference the right frame could make. A poor frame could make a good painting look washed out and out of sorts, while a good frame could make even a less-than-spectacular painting look pretty darn good.

I also learned that it wasn't always the really expensive and ornate frame that did the best job for the painting. Sometimes it would be just a simple frame that would look the best.

And a third lesson I learned was that the right and best frame drew attention to the painting and made it look good, it did not draw attention to itself.

I think the same lessons apply to designing websites.

The most important thing about the website is that it does the job you want it to do - the purpose you decided on in module one. Everything you do with the design of the page, the colors, the graphics, the text, etc should focus on bringing to the visitor's attention exactly what you want them to know about or to see.

One of the things I like to do when I design a website is to get a sense of the person behind the website, to get a sense of their business or art, and then to find a color scheme that fits with that.

Colors often evoke feelings in us. So think about the feelings that are evoked with the colors you choose for your website. Do you want to have a sense of something warm and inviting, or are you looking for something perhaps more professional and business-like?

As a very general rule-of-thumb, reds/oranges/yellows are considered warmer colors, while purples/blues/greens are considered cooler colors.

Sometimes I just ask if the person has a favorite color or colors and if I can find a variation of that color that will fit well with the purpose of the website, then I go with that.

Sometimes I take the web colors from the main graphic on the website - maybe the logo, maybe a main photo.

So there's lots of ways to choose your colors.

There are two ways to get colors on a website - one is by using color codes and the other is using bits of jpg or gif files.

Color codes in the HTML system that I use are called hex codes because they are a variation of a six-digit number using the numbers 1-9 and the letters a-f. There are, if I remember correctly, something like over a million color combinations available, so there's lots of possibilities. If you would like to play with some options, check out the Color Chart that I use as a starting point. This chart is what used to be known as the color-safe colors that could be used on older computers. Nowadays that's rarely a problem, so you can choose just about any color you want.

If you really want to play, you can also check out this website - Color Match - just scroll down past all the advertising to the color match section. It even gives you a choice of color combinations to consider. Or just type "website colors" into a search box and you'll find lots of "colors" websites to play with.