Hue combinations for the web: Towards a repertoire of design guidelines for combining color hues based on cultural background

Abstract

Existing research shows that users tend to assess the visual appeal of a web page within 50 ms and color is the first thing that is noticed on a screen. This directly influences the user's perception of a website, and a choice of appealing color combinations may, therefore, be crucial in successful web design. This article aims to identify, formulate, and evaluate design guidelines to support designers in the process of combining color hues for websites in the context of the Swedish and Thai cultures. A quantitative approach was used to evaluate the proposed design guidelines. The results show that culture plays a role in the evaluation of color hue combinations; Thai participants rated Thai designs significantly more highly than the Swedish participants, but the reverse was not true, and Thai designs were rated more highly than Swedish designs by all participants. The results may have implications for practitioners working in the field of web design and for the broader debate of cultural influence on color preference.