Natural Health Clinic Website Design - Using Colour
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This is the Griffen Mill Design Guide to designing websites for natural health clinics. This section focusses on the use of colour. Other parts of the guide focus on choosing images, and making appropriate content and copywriting decisions. Click to return to the main guide.
Colour for Natural Health Clinics
As with any website and client, individual client preferences are paramount, especially within the design of websites for natural health clinics since there is a range of therapies included. In our experience certain colour choices and palettes are more popular with natural health clinicians. These tend to be colours associated with calm and warmth along with a sense of energy and well-being, such as purple, yellow or soft greens. Rarely would we create a natural health clinicians website with cooler colours such blue or grey, which are better suited to a more "medical" website. There is always a balance to be met when designing for natural health clinicians, as the website aims to be professional and grounded, yet it is also vital to create a warm and inviting appeal, sensitive to the nature of the client's work.
Another factor that will of course influence colour is the image choice, and natural health clinic websites are likely to include natural images or images of positive and healthy individuals. It is key therefore to ensure your palette complements this.
Colour Palettes for Natural Health Clinics
There are a number of tools online which are suitable for experimenting with and choosing colour palettes. Here are a few that we have used often for natural health clinic websites. Different therapists will have a leaning to different styles of palette, depending on whether they wish to present a more individual and vibrant look or something more low key and businesslike.
Option 1: Warm & Bright
This scheme is based on a single colour tint, and uses only variations made by changing the saturation and brightness. A natural health clinic may wish to use this scheme to maintain a consistent design, in-keeping with their logo or existing business literature. The use of lighter shades as a background tone along with darker headings will balance the design well. A darker yellow/gold colour can be used as an accent colour, which can complement a monochromatic design well by highlighting certain elements.
Option 3: Warm Skin Tones
This is a palette based on an analogic colour palette, using a warm tone of 50 degrees hue as the reference colour. Analogic colour palettes are similar to monochromatic, but draw on other colours adjacent in the colour wheel. This may be very well suited to a natural health clinic, as it allows for skin tones to fit alongside warmer tones. If the client wishes a warmer palette, then a hue of around 30-40 degrees would include even warmer purples and pinks. The subtle green tones would complement a natural image, if used. This scheme aids a more universal appeal to a design, which may be a valuable aspect to many clinics.
Option 2: Natural Energy
This colour scheme also uses an analogic model, which complements the primary colour with its adjacent colours set at either side on the colour wheel. By using a tone only 20 degrees from the primary colour, a natural and dynamic complementing scheme is created. These bright and energetic colours are perfect for natural health clinic websites as they create a warm, healing and inviting appeal, whilst maintaining a professional and grounded outlook. The colours within this scheme also complement many of the tones found in natural images such as flowers and fruit, likely to be used within natural health clinic websites.
Option 4: Natural and Complementary
This scheme shows how the typical colours used within a natural health clinics website can link together. A scheme using the softer yellows and oranges as background tones would work very well alongside stronger greens or purples. The stronger tones should be used delicately within the different design elements of the site. The colours used will be specific to the client, taking into account any existing business logo or literature.