In this article, we’ll cover:
License the images used in this collage via Anton Vierietin, Hussein Satrio, and Anton Vierietin.
What Is Color Contrast and Why Is Color Contrast Important?
Color has always played such an important role in the psychological and aesthetic perception of designs, from poster layouts to brand identities.
Color contrast is a simple yet incredibly effective technique for harnessing the power of color in a new way, particularly when we look at web color accessibility, bringing harmony, interest, and legibility to digital projects.
Color Contrast Explained
What is color contrast? Color contrast measures the degree to which one color differs from another to the human eye.
This relates to contrast ratio (CR) which is a numeric way of measuring the difference between the luminence of the brightest shade (white) to that of the darkest shade (black) on digital displays.
In the simplest terms, color contrast is how much one color stands out against another, when they are in close proximity.
Color contrast measures the degree to which one color differs from another to the human eye.
Some color combinations have a natural contrast and a high contrast ratio, such as black and white, which is the highest-contrast color pairing.
Other high-contrast color combinations include red and green, and blue and orange. These two color contrast combinations are in fact complementary colors, sitting opposite to each other on a color wheel.
A good rule of thumb for choosing color combinations with sufficient color contrast is to use complementary colors, or to pair a very bright or pale color with a very dark color.
Let’s dive into the hyper-colorful world of color contrast and discover why this simple design technique is so crucial for web designers to know about.
You can find incidents of color contrast across the natural world, which have often evolved in order to increase visibility, act as a warning sign or, in the case of zebra stripes, to confuse predators. License these images via sl_photo, HVPMdev, and javarman.
Why Color Contrast Is Important
We see the world in color, but we also interpret important information about our surroundings using color contrast.
Imagine walking through a darkening forest on a winter’s evening. The only way to sense how to move through this environment is to distinguish dark objects from light ones, with our eyes interpreting light as color contrast that builds the shape of dark trees against pale moonlight.
In other words, color contrast allows us to see clearly, and maximizing the level of color contrast in designs will allow others to distinguish between text and background colors, or between a button and a background image.
License the images used in this collage via Anton Vierietin, Hussein Satrio, and Anton Vierietin.
Color Contrast and Website Accessibility
While a high level of color contrast can make things easier to see, a low level can impact severely on web color accessibility, making information difficult to read and the user journey tricky and frustrating to navigate.
The more similar in color contrast your chosen colors are, the harder the human eye has to work to process the difference between the two colors, resulting in illegible text or websites that discourage or divert user navigation.
According to a 2022 National Health Interview Survey, more than 50 million US adults over the age of 18 reported experiencing some degree of vision loss, with around 8% of the American population experiencing more severe visual impairments, including blindness.
If web designers neglect the importance of web color accessibility, businesses risk alienating at least 8% of their potential audience, which increases further if the business is aiming to bring an older demographic onto their website.
Best Practices for Color Contrast and Web Accessibility
What are the best practices for boosting color contrast and website accessibility as a result?
These top tips will help you to improve your contrast ratio, and create beautifully balanced website designs:
- Use tried-and-tested color combinations that are proven to be effective at improving aesthetic appeal and accessibility. Complementary colors or two high-contrast tints of the same color (such as pastel green and dark green) make naturally stylish partners, but also feature high color contrast.
- Consider using subtle tints and tones to build hierarchy and accessibility into your web design colors. For example, a headline should be the first thing you want users to read, so this can be set in a high-contrast color, such as black against a pale background. Then you can lead the user to the next item of information, such as a subheading or body text, by using a slightly less high-contrast color, such as dark gray. Set important call-to-action items, like buttons, in a high-contrast accent color, such as bright red, to really draw attention to where you want users to click.
- Avoid extremely high-contrast color combinations for screen-based designs. While maximizing color contrast is important, a very high contrast ratio can in some cases create the undesirable effect of hurting your users’ eyes! The best way to sidestep excessive color contrast is to introduce ‘mediator’ colors into the color palette, which offset the bright light emitted by pale colors, such as white or pastel neons. Mediator colors sit in the middle ground between high- and low-contrast colors. A good example would be introducing blue or red as a mediator color into an otherwise black and white website scheme.
- Use thoughtful color contrast to set the tone of your website design. Printed books and magazines typically use dark text set against a white or pale background, so you can bring a similarly bookish or traditional feel to your website design by using dark type and a pale background. Reverse the color contrast to bring an edgier or more informal feel to a web layout. Dark mode backgrounds with white, pastel, or neon text step away from the colors favored in traditional print design, giving your website a futuristic mood.
License the images used in this collage via Anton Vierietin, Hussein Satrio, and Nick Risky.
How to Make Sure Your Colors Are Contrasting
Choosing the perfect contrast ratio to create optimum web color accessibility can be tricky—there are so many color combinations to choose from!
Luckily, there are plenty of contrast test tools available online that designers can use to perform a contrast test and to check the contrast ratio of a web design.
Popular Color Contrast Checkers
The five popular color contrast checker tools below can all be accessed online for free, so it’s a no brainer to bookmark these handy web contrast checkers for using in web design projects.
1. Color Contrast Checker (FREE)
This accessibility color checker is designed to gauge the level of color contrast between text and background, giving you an immediate impression of how the color pairing would look like in action.
With a design-forward interface, Color Contrast Checker is also completely free to use. An indispensable contrast test tool for web designers and app design.
2. Coolors Contrast Checker (FREE)
Nifty online contrast test tool Coolors assesses the contrast ratio of text and background colors and gives you a website accessibility rating ranging from 0 to 10.
The contrast calculator tool is free to use, with an option to upgrade to generate more complex color palettes for your web design projects.
This is a really nice accessibility color checker tool that gives you a strong idea of whether you’re heading in the right direction.
3. TPGi’s Color Contrast Analyser (CCA) (FREE)
This web contrast checker is a must-have for web designers looking to comply with WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), which were released in 2018 to improve the quality of accessibility for visually-impaired users across the web.
This free color contrast calculator includes some impressive features, including the ability to test color contrast across multiple media, including PowerPoint slides, InDesign documents, and social media designs, as well as bonus features, such as a Color Blindness Simulator and Dark Mode options. A comprehensive color contrast checker for advanced color contrast designing.
4. Contrast (FREE)
For Mac users, this web contrast checker is designed to be used as a seamless plugin that sits alongside your workspace, making it possible to check web color accessibility and contrast ratio without interrupting your workflow.
Usable across multiple platforms, such as Figma or Adobe programs, the app acts as a floating window that can be quickly consulted at any time to check if chosen color pairings comply with WCAG standards.
Although created with designers in mind, this handy contrast calculator gets bonus points for ease of use and intuitive design.
5. Stark (Free Trial)
For a complete suite of website accessibility tools, look no further than Stark, which integrates a number of accessibility compliance features into one dashboard.
For web designers who really need to make sure every aspect of their website is accessible, this is an indispensable cover-all tool that can be used in Adobe XD, Figma, and Sketch.
Although not a free tool, you can try this website accessibility app for free with an initial trial.
Conclusion: Color Contrast Makes the Web Better for Everyone!
Color contrast is such a simple design technique, yet when it comes to web design, it can really spell the difference between an aesthetically pleasing, accessible web design and a website that discourages clicks and disrupts the user journey.
With website accessibility requirements evolving and advancing all the time, it’s paramount that web designers and graphic designers make full use of contrast checker tools to build websites that work for everybody, including those users with visual impairments.
Color contrast really is the key to making the web better for everyone!
For more website design tips and color scheme inspiration, don’t miss these articles and palette resources:
License the images used in the cover collage via Anton Vierietin, Hussein Satrio, and Nick Risky.
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