How to Choose the Right Colour Scheme for a Recruitment Website

People can form an impression of a website’s visual appeal remarkably quickly. Research by Lindgaard and colleagues found that people could assess visual appeal after seeing a webpage for as little as 50 milliseconds.

This does not mean that colour alone determines whether somebody trusts a recruitment agency, leaves its website or completes an application. Typography, imagery, layout, content, performance and usability all contribute to that first impression.

However, colour remains an important part of recruitment website design. A suitable colour scheme can:

• Strengthen your agency’s visual identity
• Make content easier to understand
• Draw attention to important actions
• Distinguish different parts of the website
• Support accessibility
• Create consistency across your digital marketing

The objective is not simply to choose attractive colours. Your colour scheme must work for candidates, clients, prospective employees and anyone else using your website.

Start With Your Brand Identity

Your brand identity should inform your colour choices.

Before selecting individual colours or hexadecimal codes, define how your recruitment agency should be perceived. Consider whether you want the brand to appear:

• Established and dependable
• Modern and innovative
• Specialist and authoritative
• Energetic and ambitious
• Personal and approachable
• Premium and exclusive
• Direct and practical

Your colours should support the agency’s positioning rather than imitate current design trends or competitors.

A financial services recruitment consultancy may want a different visual identity from a high-volume temporary staffing business. An executive search firm may require a more restrained palette than an agency recruiting for creative or consumer brands.

You should also consider how the palette will work across:

• Your recruitment website
• Job adverts
• Consultant profiles
• Salary guides
• Social media graphics
• Email campaigns
• Presentations and proposals
• Printed marketing materials

Consistent use of a recognisable palette can make it easier for people to connect these materials with the same agency.

Use Colour Psychology Carefully

Colour can influence how a design is perceived, but colours do not produce universal emotional or biological responses.

The meaning of a colour can change according to the audience, sector, culture, shade, surrounding content and existing brand associations. Colour psychology should therefore be treated as a design consideration rather than a scientific formula.

Some common Western design associations include:

• Blue: Frequently associated with stability, professionalism and dependability.
• Red: Can attract attention and communicate energy, importance or urgency.
• Green: Often associated with growth, wellbeing, nature or progress.
• Yellow: Can communicate warmth, optimism or energy, but may be difficult to read when contrast is poor.
• Purple: Sometimes associated with creativity, individuality or premium positioning.
• Black: Can create a modern, authoritative or premium appearance.
• White: Often supports simplicity, space and clarity.

These associations are not rules. A familiar colour may work because it reflects your existing identity, even if it does not fit a standard colour-psychology description.

The most important question is whether the complete design supports your agency’s positioning and helps people use the website.

Build a Practical Colour Palette

A recruitment website normally needs more than a logo colour. It needs a complete system covering backgrounds, text, navigation, buttons, links, forms, alerts and interactive elements.

A practical palette may include:

• A primary brand colour
• A supporting secondary colour
• One or two accent colours
• Neutral background colours
• Dark colours for body text
• Colours for success, warning and error messages
• Accessible hover and keyboard-focus states

Keep the core palette manageable. A small set of clearly defined colours and tonal variations is usually easier to apply consistently than a large collection of unrelated colours.

This does not mean every website must use exactly two, three or four colours. The number matters less than having a clear purpose for each colour.

Consider the 60-30-10 Framework

The 60-30-10 framework is an optional way to distribute colour across a design.

It suggests using approximately:

• 60% dominant or neutral colour: Main backgrounds and large areas
• 30% supporting colour: Sections, navigation and secondary elements
• 10% accent colour: Important buttons, links and highlights

These percentages do not need to be followed precisely. The framework simply encourages designers to create a clear hierarchy instead of giving every colour equal prominence.

For a recruitment website, the accent colour might be used for the primary action, such as:

• Apply for this job
• Register your CV
• Submit a vacancy
• Request a demonstration
• Contact the team

Do not use the strongest accent colour on every button, heading and decorative element. If everything demands attention, the most important action may become harder to identify.

Use Complementary Colours With Care

Complementary colours sit opposite each other on a traditional colour wheel. They can produce strong visual contrast, but they do not automatically create an accessible or comfortable design.

Highly saturated complementary colours can compete for attention when they cover large areas. They may work better when one colour is dominant and the other is used selectively as an accent.

A colour wheel can help you explore possible combinations, but each combination must still be tested on the actual website.

Useful colour tools include:

• Coolors for generating and adjusting palettes
• Adobe Color for exploring colour harmonies and contrast
• Canva Colour Palette Generator for extracting colours from an uploaded image
• WebAIM Contrast Checker for testing text and background combinations

A mathematically generated palette is only a starting point. It does not guarantee accessibility, brand suitability or effective recruitment website design.

Design for Accessibility

Accessibility is a functional requirement, not an optional design preference.

Under WCAG 2.2 Level AA, text generally requires a minimum contrast ratio of:

• 4.5:1 for normal text
• 3:1 for large text

Large text is generally defined as at least 18 point or 14 point when bold.

Passing these text-contrast checks does not make an entire website WCAG compliant. Form controls, icons, focus indicators, error messages and meaningful graphical elements must also be assessed against the relevant requirements.

Information should never be communicated through colour alone.

For example:

• A form error should include an explanatory message or icon, not just a red border.
• Open and closed vacancies should have clear text labels, not just different colours.
• Selected job filters should have a visible state beyond a change of colour.
• Links should remain identifiable within the surrounding text.
• Keyboard focus should be clearly visible.
• Charts should use labels or patterns as well as different colours.
• Success messages should contain clear text, not just a green background.

These measures help people with low vision, colour vision deficiencies and other access requirements. They can also make the website clearer for everyone.

Apply Colour to Recruitment Website Journeys

A recruitment website usually serves several different audiences and conversion journeys.

Candidates may need to:

• Search and filter jobs
• Read job descriptions
• Upload a CV
• Complete an application form
• Create job alerts
• Contact a consultant

Clients may need to:

• Understand your recruitment specialisms
• Review your evidence and case studies
• Meet your consultants
• Submit a vacancy
• Request a call
• Make an enquiry

Prospective employees may want to:

• Learn about your culture
• Explore internal vacancies
• Understand career progression
• Meet the leadership team

Your colour hierarchy should help each audience recognise the next relevant action without creating competing visual signals.

For example, candidate and client actions can use consistent button styling while relying on clear labels to distinguish their purpose. You should not depend on two different colours alone to communicate the difference.

Our approach to bespoke recruitment website design considers the complete candidate and client journey rather than treating colour as an isolated design decision.

Maintain Brand Consistency

Consistent colours make it easier for people to recognise the same organisation across different pages and marketing channels.

Create a simple colour guide that records:

• Primary colours
• Secondary colours
• Accent colours
• Background colours
• Text colours
• Link colours
• Button colours
• Hover states
• Keyboard-focus states
• Form error and success colours
• Approved colour combinations
• Combinations that should not be used

Include the correct hexadecimal, RGB and CMYK values where relevant.

This reduces the risk of different people using slightly different shades across your website, job adverts, presentations and social media graphics.

Consistency should not override usability. If a logo colour does not provide sufficient contrast for small text or buttons, use an accessible alternative rather than forcing the brand colour into an unsuitable role.

Test the Website, Not Just the Palette

A colour palette may look effective in a branding document but fail when applied to a working recruitment website.

Test it on real pages containing:

• Job-search filters
• Job cards
• Long job descriptions
• Consultant profiles
• Application forms
• Client enquiry forms
• Salary tables
• Testimonials
• Calls to action
• Validation and error messages

Check the website on mobile, tablet and desktop screens. Different displays can render colours differently, while glare, brightness settings and viewing conditions may affect readability.

The squint test can help you assess visual hierarchy. Look at the page while slightly blurring your vision. The most important action should remain easy to identify.

However, the squint test is not an accessibility test. It should be used alongside proper contrast checking, keyboard testing and other accessibility reviews.

Test One Meaningful Change at a Time

Where a website receives enough traffic to support a meaningful comparison, A/B testing can help assess a specific design change.

Avoid testing two completely different colour schemes at once. If several colours, layouts and components change together, you will not know which change influenced the result.

Instead, test one controlled change, such as two accessible treatments for a primary call-to-action button. Keep the following elements consistent:

• Button wording
• Button position
• Page content
• Form process
• Surrounding layout
• Target audience
• Traffic source

Measure a meaningful conversion, such as:

• Completed job applications
• Candidate registrations
• Submitted vacancies
• Completed client enquiries
• Demonstration requests

A button click on its own may not represent a successful result if users abandon the form that follows.

Do not rely on a short testing period without considering traffic volume, conversion volume, recruitment seasonality and other changes taking place on the website.

How to Audit Your Website Colour Palette

Step 1: Identify the primary actions

Determine the most important actions for candidates and clients.

These might include:

• Apply now
• Register your CV
• Submit a vacancy
• Contact a consultant
• Request a demonstration

Decide which action should receive the strongest visual emphasis on each page.

Step 2: Record every colour in use

Review your website and list the colours used for:

• Backgrounds
• Text
• Links
• Navigation
• Buttons
• Forms
• Icons
• Job-status labels
• Error messages
• Success messages

Look for duplicate shades, inconsistent button colours and colours that have no clear purpose.

Step 3: Check text contrast

Use a tool such as the WebAIM Contrast Checker to test foreground and background combinations.

Check body text, headings, links, buttons, navigation, placeholder text, labels and text placed over images.

Step 4: Check non-text elements

Review form borders, icons, focus indicators, selected filters, charts and other interactive components.

Make sure that important information is not communicated by colour alone.

Step 5: Review the visual hierarchy

Check whether the primary action stands out without making secondary actions difficult to find.

Decorative colour should not compete with application, registration or enquiry buttons.

Step 6: Test complete recruitment journeys

Complete the main candidate and client tasks on mobile and desktop devices.

Do not stop after reviewing the homepage. Test job searches, application forms, client pages and contact processes.

Step 7: Document the approved palette

Create a simple guide showing which colours should be used, where they should appear and which combinations meet the required contrast levels.

Step 8: Measure meaningful outcomes

Monitor whether design changes affect completed applications, registrations, enquiries or other important actions.

For advice on supporting marketing messages with information people can verify, read Tip 18 of 31: Replace Vague Claims With Specific Evidence.

Visual credibility should also be supported by clear information about the people and organisation behind the website. Tip 23 of 31: Make It Clear Who Is Behind the Website explains why visible leadership and consultant information matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the purpose of defining brand values before choosing colours?

Defining your brand values gives the colour scheme a clear purpose. It helps you choose colours that support how the recruitment agency wants to be perceived by candidates, clients and prospective employees.

Colour should reinforce the agency’s positioning, tone and specialisms rather than being chosen solely according to personal preference or current design trends.

How does colour psychology influence website users?

Colour can influence how a website is perceived, but it does not produce the same emotional response in every person.

Associations depend on the shade, context, audience, culture, surrounding content and the user’s previous experiences. Colour psychology is therefore best used as a design consideration, not as a guarantee that a colour will create trust, urgency or another particular response.

How does the 60-30-10 framework help create a palette?

The 60-30-10 framework provides an optional way to distribute colours across a design.

It suggests using approximately 60% for the dominant or neutral colour, 30% for a supporting colour and 10% for an accent. It can help create a visual hierarchy, but the percentages do not need to be followed precisely.

Accessibility, readability and the purpose of each element remain more important than adhering to a fixed formula.

Which tools can help create and test a colour palette?

Tools such as Coolors, Adobe Color and Canva can help generate and explore possible colour combinations.

A contrast checker, such as WebAIM’s tool, should then be used to assess specific text and background combinations. Generated palettes still need to be tested on real pages, forms, buttons and recruitment journeys.

Why should recruitment agencies test colour changes?

Testing can help determine whether a specific design change supports an important action, such as completing an application or submitting a client enquiry.

Change one meaningful element at a time and keep the wording, layout and surrounding content consistent. The test should run for long enough to collect a useful volume of conversions and should not compromise accessibility.

Author

Darren Revell, Co-Founder, RecruiterWEB

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