How to Improve a Website That Looks Outdated Through Its Color Scheme
If an older website looks dated, there is no need to replace every color with whatever is currently fashionable. In some designs, large backgrounds, headings, and buttons all compete for attention, making it difficult to know where to look. A more useful improvement is to clarify each color’s role and make the existing information easier to follow. Here is a before-and-after example and a practical review process.
Look for problems with color roles, not just older color trends
Start by assessing the visual priority of information and how colors are assigned. When the header, page background, cards, and buttons are all highly saturated, an important action such as registration may be harder to notice. Faint text and excessive decoration can also make the reading order unclear.
Review these three aspects together on the same page:
- Area: Does a strong color cover too much of the background? Could broad surfaces become more restrained, leaving less area for the accent?
- Role: Are headings, links, and buttons all using unrelated attention-grabbing colors? Could elements with the same function use a consistent palette?
- Light–dark contrast: Can readers distinguish text and button labels from their backgrounds? Could spacing and text size help establish structure without adding more colors?
Bright colors, warm hues, and gradients are not inherently outdated. If they suit the audience and purpose, keep them. The key is making it clear which elements deserve attention.
Example: refreshing the colors of a local course website
Imagine a fictional website listing classes and workshops for local residents. Its original design uses yellowish backgrounds and orange on several interface elements. The proposed revision uses pale neutral surfaces and dark text, retaining a warm accent mainly for the registration button. HEX (hexadecimal) is a base-16 notation that specifies a color’s red, green, and blue components.
| Color role | Before | After | Reason for adjusting it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall page background | #FFF4D6 | #F7F8FA | Reduce yellow across large surfaces to provide a quieter base |
| Body text and headings | #766555 | #293548 | Create stronger light–dark contrast against the pale background |
| Header background | #EAA53A | #234C60 | Give the top of the page a more restrained visual role |
| Information card background | #FFE8B3 | #FFFFFF | Separate cards gently from the main page surface |
| Registration button background | #F0872B | #A84228 | Concentrate the warm accent on an action and improve label contrast |
| Header and button text | #FFFFFF | #FFFFFF | Keep white text after checking it against each new background |
| Decorative divider | #DDBE76 | #D8E0E8 | Use a less prominent line for visual separation |
In this example, the original orange registration button background #F0872B against its white label #FFFFFF has a calculated contrast ratio of approximately 2.56:1. With the proposed darker terracotta button background #A84228 and white text #FFFFFF, the ratio is approximately 6.04:1, exceeding the 4.5:1 requirement for normal-sized text.
The revised body text #293548 against the page background #F7F8FA has a contrast ratio of approximately 11.64:1. White text #FFFFFF against the new header background #234C60 reaches approximately 9.23:1. These figures are calculated using the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) method for the specific fully opaque color pairs shown here.
Adjust one page first, then review other screens and states
- Choose a representative page: Compare the homepage or course listing before and after the change. Check whether the most important information is now easier to identify.
- Begin with backgrounds and text: Simplify the large surfaces, then adjust cards, headings, and registration buttons. If color alone cannot solve the problem, review spacing and decoration as well.
- Check interaction states: Inspect hover (when a pointer is over an element), focus (when an element is the current target for keyboard interaction), and error displays. Test the contrast of meaningful icons and essential control boundaries against the colors next to them.
- Apply the pattern consistently: Verify mobile views, forms, and completion pages before reusing the same color roles across the site.
The pale divider in this example is decorative. Do not automatically use it for required input field outlines or other controls; those need their own checks against the generally applicable 3:1 non-text contrast criterion. A website can also feel outdated because of photography, typography, or layout. Assess the full page rather than assuming that changing its colors will always be enough.