Unveiling the Hidden World of Color in UI Design

Sometimes curiosity leads you to unexpected places. This time it led me to the question: are the century-old principles of colors still valid in modern design? 

A seasoned designer has a great gut feeling for a neat color palette, are these palettes still in line with century-old guidelines, or are we unknowningly redefining beauty?

Collecting and inspecting 196 colors to better understand color theory

In 2021 I collected 196 random colors from popular Dribbble submissions. Why? To figure out what the popular & most used colors in UI design are, and to check if the century-old color theories still dominate modern designs we seem to admire.

Do the designs you and I like, contain the color schemes we’ve been taught? Or is there something else going on we’re missing? 

I had a gut feeling it was the latter.

The approach

I randomly picked 196 colors from about 20-30 interface designs, found on Dribbble, and I could conclude I was both right and wrong. 

I learned something new that I had not read anywhere else before.

Lessons learned

In the book “Beauty”, which is sitting on my shelf, I learned that purple is quite a popular color.  Yet, I didn’t come across this color often. Why? Because it’s neither warm nor cold!

I discovered that, whatever the palette, it’s a combination of warm and cold colors.

In other words, we’re drawn to contrast. We’ve seen designers adding contrast with shape and typography, and color is no different! It can add contrast too.

Below you’ll find a series of posters that visualize these results. 

Notice how the colors form an hourglass-like shape, which visually communicates the lesson learned here very clearly