How Should You Choose Colors for a Travel Website? How to Balance Photos and CTAs

Travel websites often invite visitors to compare photos of coastlines, forests, and town streets when choosing a trip. But when the pictures dominate the page, people may miss the links to itinerary details or the next booking-related step. A CTA (call to action) is a button or prompt that encourages someone to take that next step. Using a fictional day-trip search page, this guide explains how to give destination photos room to stand out while keeping the CTAs easy to identify.

Give photos and CTAs separate roles and consistent positions in each card

Imagine three fictional options: a coastal walk, a forest outing, and a town exploration. Their pictures have different subjects, but the cards can share the same width, photo proportions, heading positions, and CTA placement. Write the destination type and trip name below each image. Visitors should not have to identify the trip from its scenery or color alone.

Blue sea, green trees, and varied building colors are already present inside the photographs. Quiet, consistent card backgrounds and text colors make it easier to compare the options without adding more competing hues. Use a clearly underlined text link for ordinary itinerary details, then give the primary CTA its own consistent location on the card.

White button text over a photograph may disappear against a bright sky or a pale building. Instead, consider putting each CTA below the image, on a solid-color surface where the text contrast can be measured reliably. Even when large photos are an important part of the design, reserve enough space around the controls to make their purpose clear.

Example palette for photos and CTAs in a travel-plan listing

For this fictional travel site, use deep blue-teal ■#173C52 for the header and white ■#FFFFFF for its text, providing about 11.64:1 contrast. A contrast ratio measures the difference in relative luminance between two colors. HEX is a way to specify web colors with a # sign and six hexadecimal digits. Set the page background to pale blue-gray ■#F5F8FA and the three travel-plan cards to white ■#FFFFFF, creating a quiet setting around the images.

• Plan names and descriptions: Use dark blue-gray ■#243746 for titles and regular text. Against the white card ■#FFFFFF, it has about 12.28:1 contrast. Supporting descriptions in slate blue-gray ■#475569 have about 7.58:1 contrast against white ■#FFFFFF. Identify options in words as coastal, forest, or town trips as well as showing photographs.
• Ordinary detail links: Deep blue ■#175C75 contrasts with a white card ■#FFFFFF at about 7.44:1. Add an underline and a label such as “View itinerary details” so this secondary action differs in both shape and wording from a filled CTA.
• CTA before the adjustment: A light orange button ■#FFBB66 with white text ■#FFFFFF has only about 1.67:1 contrast. Even if the button itself attracts attention away from the photo, its lettering does not meet the usual minimum for normal-sized text.
• CTA after the adjustment: Change the “Check availability” button to deep reddish-orange ■#A64424 with white lettering ■#FFFFFF. Its text contrast increases to about 6.05:1. The button contrasts with its adjacent white card ■#FFFFFF at about 6.05:1, and with the pale surrounding background ■#F5F8FA at about 5.67:1. Keep the same color, wording, and location for the same action on all three cards.

For a short trip-condition label, a pale blue-gray panel ■#E6F2F4 with dark blue-teal text ■#205465 offers about 7.30:1 contrast. However, real departure dates, prices, and available places must come from verified service data. Display statuses such as “Full” in words, not just colors. These travel plans and buttons are illustrative; they do not represent actual trips or confirm real-time availability.

Check mobile layouts, interaction states, and replacement photos

The contrast between a white card ■#FFFFFF and the pale page background ■#F5F8FA is only about 1.07:1. Where an identifiable card edge is needed, add a gray-blue border ■#718291. It contrasts with the white card ■#FFFFFF at about 3.96:1 and with the pale page background ■#F5F8FA at about 3.71:1.

For pointer hover, a darker reddish-orange ■#843419 can be used on the CTA. It contrasts with white button text ■#FFFFFF at about 8.45:1. Provide a separate visible focus indicator for keyboard users. For example, a blue outline ■#1D4ED8 against a white card ■#FFFFFF has about 6.70:1 contrast. If the outline is offset from the button, test the actual adjacent colors, too.

On mobile, check that cropping does not hide what makes a destination recognizable. Even if captions are different lengths, visitors should still be able to find each card’s CTA. Do not label a button that merely checks availability as though it immediately completes a booking; the wording must match the real process. Selected and full states must also be identified by more than photographic or color differences.

Under WCAG 2.2 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), Level AA generally requires at least 4.5:1 contrast for normal-sized text against its background and 3:1 between essential non-text indicators of interface components and adjacent colors. HueRoll can suggest related colors and compare a selected color against white or black. It cannot compare arbitrary color pairs or automatically determine WCAG AA or AAA conformance. Test the actual text, buttons, and necessary boundaries in the finished layout.