10 Examples of Websites Using Pastel Color Schemes
“Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it’s on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you’ve got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.”
– Taylor Swift
Like miss Swift said in he above quote, red is a real strong color. It a color that evokes intense emotions , and is always your safest best, when designing a website, to make it eye-catching and instantly noticeable.
However, softer colors can also make for absolutely gorgeous design.
Like you probably guessed, we are talking about pastel colors, a family of high value and low intermediate saturation. The name can be incredibly confusing, as it used to describe either the colors, the art medium itself, the works produced in this medium, and even the act of creating a work.
Pastels, as a medium, are sticks that consist of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigment is exactly the same as those you might find in any other medium, like oil paints, but the binder used is of a neutral hue and low saturation, making the colors closer to the natural dry pigments. The closest, as a matter of fact.
Manufacturing of pastels originate in the 15th century, and one famous pastel user is that century’s greatest mind (and one of the greatest mind’s in human history) Leonardo da Vinci, who learned about them from Jean De Paris, upon his arrival in Milan in 1499.
However, France is where pastels became truly popular, reaching their peak during the 18th century, when they became very fashionable in portraiture, and being used by artists such as Jean-Bapitste Perronneau, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Rosalba Carriera. In fact, the only time pastels feel out of fashion was for a short period after the French Revolution, but made a comeback during the mid-19th century.
Now that we are done with the brief history lesson, it is time to get to what you good people have been waiting for.
We are on a constant quest to provide you with excellent design inspiration. So today, we will be showing a few awesome websites that use pastel color schemes in their designs, so you can see how it is done, and incorporate some of these ideas into your won projects.
1. Make Your Money Matter
“We’re out to educate people about all the good things that come with joining a credit union.”
2. Built by Buffalo
“Founded in 2006, Buffalo is a small web design & development agency based in Brighton, UK. Over the last few years we’ve made a reputation for building websites that look great and are easy-to-use.”
3. Be Visionare
“Art is as diverse as a human life itself. There is a connection of passion and inspiration that flows through every artistry and craft. Life without art and joy would be pretty lame, let’s admit it. Even when you don’t feel like working your hands, you can always work your soul through admiring paintings or watching a good movie.”
4. The First Time
“Sleek and seductive, dark and mysterious. You wrap your hands around its minute yet firm frame. The plinth hisses with heat as you lift the light, delicate body. You imagine whisking it away somewhere more private.”
5. Photodoto
“Now, if you’re the kind of guy who just took up photography and already thinks he has snapped absolutely perfect images, well, this might not be the place for you. Just continue to shoot in “P” mode some more and spam your Facebook profile with hundreds and hundreds of sunsets, like the cool guy you think you are!
At Photodoto, our philosophy is that we want to build up a strong community of people willing to learn and improve their photographic skills and passion. If that’s not your way, we’ll have to part right here.”
6. J-C Suzanne
“Hi, my name is Suzanne Jean-Christophe. I am a creative front-end developer.
I worked the last five years in the ultranoir agency whose the last three as Lead Front-End developer and front-technical director. As a fresh and innovative technology supporter, I practiced my expertise serving clients such as Dior, Societe Generale, Diesel, Orange Cinema Series or Radio France.”
7. The Woman
The Woman is a yearly business conference, dedicated to to business women from Romania. It offers debate panels where the speakers take questions from the audience, and share the keys to there success.
8. Phoenix
“Phoenix the Creative Studio is a marketing agency that specializes in branding, interactive solutions and visual communication in all its forms. We don’t change the world. We change perceptions. And perceptions form reality. So you could say we’re actually changing the world after all. Imagine that.”
9. Sweez
Sweez is a Brazilian website, and we can not say for sure what it is advertising. What we can say for sure is that we want it, whatever it is.
Our best guess is that it is advertising cupcakes and such, and the totally excellent 50’s vibe really gets the point across.
10. Nine Lion Design
“Long story short. I’m an interaction designer living in the bay area with my family. I read batman graphic novels and you’ll sometimes see me cruising the bay on a black matte fixie with pink rims.”
That about wraps up our presentation of 10 examples of websites that use pastel color schemes. We hope that you thoroughly enjoyed our list, and that it got your creative juices flowing.
We would love to see more of these, so if there are any sites you would have wanted to see on this list, be sure to post it in the comment section below, as well as any other thoughts you might have.
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