While most people can recognize the merits of a hue, there’s more to consider, including value, how light or dark a color is, and saturation, its intensity. The right combination of colors can make a design feel elegant.
Elegance is all about restraint, like using one show-stopping color, a monochromatic scheme, or muted shades. Restraint can feel luxe, inviting us to take a break from the technicolor world around us. If you’re looking for elegant color inspiration for your website design, peruse these ten elegant color palettes from Framer templates and sites.
What colors are the most elegant?
Color psychology holds that most neutrals, deep shades of primary hues, and pastels evoke elegance. Consider colors like:
Soft black
Beige or champagne
Warm or cool gray
Royal blue
Deep purple
Dark teal
Pastels
A color isn’t inherently elegant or inelegant. What matters is how it’s used in a design. Even neon orange can feel elegant when applied with restraint, while champagne can become bland without a contrasting accent.
Take the list above, for example. All together, these colors would be too much. But just one or two of them in combination, or used sparingly against a contrasting color, can create an elegant look. A pleasing color palette comes from creating a visual hierarchy that both guides your eyes and gives your eyes a chance to rest.
10 elegant color palettes for exceptional websites
Use these elegant color palettes as a guide for your own brand colors:
1. Earth tones
Olive #8e9867 | Terra cotta #e1937d | Warm beige #f8f3ec | Acorn brown #8d6959
In Framer’s Sereenity template, warm earth tones create a sense of ease and calm. The beige background feels like parchment, while the brown provides a muted alternative to black for body copy. The olive green and terra cotta provide wayfinding by standing out from the business-as-usual black type, encouraging the user to click calls to action (CTAs) and explore the site. Together with rounded corners and simple typography, this color combination is sophisticated, while still feeling approachable.
Vibrant greens
Lime #e1fcad | Deep teal #122023 | Deepest navy #1e1e1f | Fog #e9e9e9
Some of the best color palettes that capture elegance are monochromatic, choosing one featured color and exploring its full range. In Framer’s ©Hydra template, the focus is green; a deep teal offers more intrigue than the standard black and contrasts with the lime green. While the lime shade could feel chaotic, it feels confident alongside the deep teal in this green color palette.
A deep navy that’s only slightly different from the teal stands in for true black, and a light foggy gray differentiates page sections only slightly from their white surroundings. The result is a narrow focus on just a few colors so that the important buttons and information stand out.
Warm neutrals
Leather #51301f | Auburn #7a3110 | Cappucino #aa8867 | Cream #fff3db
In Framer’s Harper template, shades of brown make up a monochromatic color palette that feels at once, warm, inviting, and bold. Here, browns confidently call to mind elegant natural materials like polished leather or gleaming wood. The rich browns are balanced with lighter shades, which pick up the gold and wood details in the photography.
Like the Vibrant Greens color scheme, replacing black with a dark color makes for a design that’s both minimalist and high-end.
Maroon mood
Soft black #262626 | Sophisticated gray #575757 | Maroon #7a3b3b | Pale Rose #f8f5f5
Maroon is the mood of Framer’s Mindify template, a monochromatic color scheme where muted tints like rose and darkened hues like maroon cast red in a new light. Instead of red’s usual association with high energy and urgency, the deep maroon is like a warm hug. Gray body copy helps the lightweight display type pop, and icons add some personality to an otherwise minimal page. The focus on maroon and its tint, rose, keeps this layout feeling narrow in its chromatic scope.
Bold orange
Vivid Orange #ff5c00 | French Roast #3e2407 | Soft Brown #796758 | Orangey Greige #f7f0e8
Two or more bold, bright colors used in combination can shout, “Emergency!” But one bold color, paired with quiet, complementary neutrals? That’s an elegant brand identity, such as on Delphi’s Framer-built website. Color schemes that feature one iconic statement color while the others sing backup are ultra popular for a reason: They’re distinctive, eye-catching and ownable while still being restrained and considered enough to feel elegant.
Cool blues
Deep cyan #0d1e21 | Soft teal #2d464b | Cool Gray #899da0 | Pale Blue #d8e6e8
Deep blues have a long history of tradition, authority, and trustworthiness, but the cyan twist makes it feel modern. Its lighter tint pairings create an apt color scheme for a financial institution, as shown in the example of Framer’s Busix template. Deep cyan is another way to show restraint where a standard green would be too predictable.
Minimal neutrals
Shadow black #101014 | Slate gray #3d3d47 | Light gray-blue #d0d1db | Warm gray #e6e6e6
Black and white is likely one of the most popular color palettes on the internet, given that minimalist web design has reigned supreme for roughly a decade. In Refit, one of Framer’s templates, the darkest black is closer to dark gray, and ultra-light warm gray helps create separation. By limiting the contrast between black and white and staying in the gray, this template reinterprets the restraint that defines elegance, and at the same time updates a classic color pairing.
Pastels
Tawny #c28951 | Amethyst #987da5 | Moss #6f9954 | Slate #88a4b8
While Athos 2.0 is using color combos that could feel overwhelming, the application is a great example of effective use of tint and value. The result is a four-color scheme whose tints feel almost neutral, since no one color sticks out from the pack. This type of color pairing works well for a brand with a connection to natural elements or a wide variety of categories to highlight. All the while, it still feels elegant because the low saturation creates a quiet unity.
Vibrant blues
Navy #002846 | Sky blue #5eb2f2 | Storm #567790 | Pale blue #baddef
This template, used in the example for a senior care facility, illustrates nicely how value can change a hue. In the Busix template above, the blues are much grayer, which conveys a sense of seriousness. Here, the blues are warmer and brighter, signaling optimism and clarity. The use of one bright color against a darker one makes it easy to find your way throughout the site, which feels elegant rather than chaotic or overstimulating.
Power purple
Aubergine #312335 | Royal purple #5b2655 | Rose #f2d0c4 | Off-white #ebe7e0
In Framer’s Healer template, purple and warm neutrals work together to deliver a pop of color that adds interest to a muted palette. Aubergine serves as a black in the display type, and it pairs with a lighter royal purple to create a smooth gradient effect on buttons and backgrounds. Together with arched photo frames and rounded corners, as well as textural details like thin borders and drop shadows, this design feels colorful while still remaining restrained.
How to create an effective color palette for your website
Choosing color is like choosing fonts or telling jokes—most people can take a crack at them intuitively, but knowing the rules can help you make choices that land. From time-honored color theory to new tools that make it easy to produce a palette, here are some top tips:
1. Use color theory
Color theory is all about the color wheel, which was developed based on how our eyes perceive light. In the color wheel, complementary colors are across from one another.
You can use color theory to design color schemes. Your eye will probably be able to tell if you’ve selected two colors that don’t work together—check them against color theory to understand why. Types of color schemes include:
Monochromatic: Choose one color and use it to make shades and tints.
Analogous: Choose three colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel.
Complementary: Choose two colors opposite each other on the color wheel.
2. Use color psychology
Numerous studies have shown that different colors provoke different emotions. Bright, bold colors are usually associated with action and movement. Muted colors call to mind healing, young childhood, and freshness. Neutrals convey calmness and authority.
Use color psychology to evoke emotion, guided by your brand identity, values, and voice. If you want to push beyond expectations, create tension by pairing colors like dark black with soft black or a neon with its deep, dark counterpart.
3. Use the 60-30-10 rule
To maximize brand recognition, one color should stand out from the rest in your palette as your primary color. Aim to use your primary color 60% of the time, your secondary color 30%, and your accent color 10% of the time.
4. Build a palette from an image
Even if all you have is one image, you’re closer to building a website than you think. Check out Framer’s Color Palette Extractor plugin, which finds complementary color groups based on an uploaded image and generates a set of hex codes that also integrate directly with your workspace. This is a great hack if you have a suite of brand images you know you’ll feature on your site and throughout the rest of your brand materials.
5. Make sure your palette meets accessibility standards
To make sure your designs meet web accessibility standards and remain readable across different visual abilities, follow the Web Accessibility Initiative’s guidelines. Using a plugin like Contrast Checker can help you evaluate contrast and ensure your work meets accessibility requirements.
Build with elegant colors in Framer
By thinking through what feelings you want your website’s colors to evoke, you can create an immersive, thoughtful experience that invites your visitors to explore more. Elegant color palettes have the benefit of feeling timeless, giving your brand—and website—staying power.
Ready to explore more elegant templates and existing websites for inspiration? Explore the latest examples in the Framer Gallery and kickstart your project with professionally-designed templates. You can also use Framer plugins like Palette Pro to generate, browse, and save hex codes and custom color palettes. Plus, you can check out your color palettes in both day and night mode within the plugin.
