How to choose the right colors for your mobile app

First, you need to know your brand and what you want it to be associated with. What is the mood or feeling you want to express?How do you want people to feel about using your app? Do you want your brand and app to feel accessible, calm, bold, sophisticated, polished, quirky, or elegant?

Once you've defined this, look at which color evokes this emotion.
Colors can be divided into two main categories: warm and cool. Warm colors tend to be associated with energy, while cool colors are linked with calmness and security.

For example,

• Red is often associated with bold or intense experiences
• Yellow is cheerful, joyful, optimistic
• Blue is one of the most prominent colors in nature. Associated with water and air, it’s tied to calmness and tranquility. It's also often used to symbolize stability and trust.
• Green symbolizes abundance, growth, and health, and has become popularly associated with peace, and environmental consciousness.
• Orange represents cheerfulness, confidence, and fun.
• Purple represents power, wealth, and royalty.
• White evokes light, purity, or cleanliness. It’s associated with simplicity and modernity in design.
• Black is associated with power, elegance, and sophistication.

Your next step is to create your color scheme. A lot of successful brands have only one or two brand colors, so don’t be afraid to keep it simple and stick with that core brand color.

A color scheme is simply the way colors are combined together.

- You can choose one base color and thendifferent tones of that one color. You can use a color wheel to help you choose different hues of that same color, varying the saturation and tone of the base color to pick out lighter and darker hues. This is called the Monochromatic color scheme. It gives a more uniform look and feel to your app.
- Next is the Triadic color scheme. There, you'll use three colors, equally spaced on the color wheel. This too will create a harmonious look, but without the ombré effect of the monochromatic scheme.
- A complementary color scheme is composed by using two colors opposite each other on the color wheel. It is the most contrasting of all color schemes, and the one that attracts the most attention. For example, red and green, blue and orange.
- Analogous colors are a group of three colors next to each other on a color wheel, such as violet, red-violet, and red. When these colors are grouped we call it an analogous color scheme. The color in the center of this group of three is sometimes called the mother color since the other two colors contain that center color. Analogous color schemes create a visually pleasing and calming display.
Whatever scheme you choose, check that your text stays readable on its background. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) call for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.


Misconceptions to avoid

Consumers' differences: Colors don't have the same meaning everywhere. For examplein the Western world, white symbolizes purity and peace, and it is generally worn at weddings. But in China, white is traditionally the color of mourning, worn at funerals. Keep this in mind when planning your color scheme, since your app will reach users all around the world.

The sector in which your business operates. Every sector has its own color codes. The most important thing is to consider the best color for you in your specific context rather than think about the general impact of color.