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Save bright or glaring shades for labels on graphical buttons or hyperlink colors. These elements ought to jump out at your visitors right away, so they're better suited for exotic or unusual color choices.

Over the years, a couple of standards have emerged as far as the colors of hyperlinks go. Table 5.1 summarizes them for you. Go out of your way to use these link colors in your Web design. Your visitors already know from experience that blue stands for an unvisited link, so, if they can fall back on this knowledge when they come to your site, you give them one less usability hurdle.

Table 5.1. Standard Hyperlink Colors

COLOR

STANDS FOR

COLOR CODE (IE)

COLOR CODE (NETSCAPE)

Blue

Unvisited links

#0000FF

#0000FF

Purple

Visited links

#990099

#663399

Of course, it's not always practical or desirable to use the standard hyperlink colors. Maybe you want to key the links to corporate colors, or colors associated with your business or group. Maybe blue and purple don't work in the larger context of your design. Straying from the standards is better in the long run than trying to make the standards work. If you stray, then stray consistently. Use the same colors to represent the same things, page after page after page. Your design motto should be, "Expectations fulfilled." It's the key to educating your visitors about how your site works. If they come to expect red as the color for unvisited links, then deliver red for unvisited links absolutely everywhere on your site.

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You don't have to follow the standards down to the exact hexadecimal color codes. If the recommended shade of blue isn't working for you, try a darker or lighter shade of blue. As long as the color is still recognizably blue to your visitors, your site benefits from the conventional color association.

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As with most other pearls of conventional Web wisdom, hyperlink color standards can backfire on you. If you decide not to follow the standards, then stay away from them entirely. For example, if you don't use blue for unvisited links, don't turn around and use blue for visited links instead. You'll create less confusion if you don't use blue at all.

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