Hupspot Guide to Website Color Schemes

Hubspot shows how powerful website color schemes can shape brand perception, guide user behavior, and improve conversions. This guide explains, in practical steps, how to build and evaluate color palettes for your own site using the same principles.

Why Hubspot Emphasizes Color Strategy

Color is more than decoration. Strategic use of color can influence how users feel, what they notice first, and whether they trust your brand. The original Hubspot article on website color schemes highlights three big goals:

Make brands instantly recognizable.
Create a consistent experience across pages.
Highlight key actions like signups or purchases.

Keeping these goals in mind will help you select colors with intent instead of guessing.

Core Principles Behind Hubspot Color Schemes

The source guide from Hubspot breaks down color choices into a few core principles that apply to any site, in any industry.

1. Understand Color Psychology

Different colors carry different emotional associations. While cultural context matters, these general patterns are widely used in web design:

Blue: Trust, reliability, security; common in SaaS and finance.
Green: Growth, nature, calm; popular with eco, health, and financial brands.
Red: Energy, urgency, excitement; often used for promotions and alerts.
Yellow / Orange: Warmth, optimism, friendliness; good for accents and CTAs.
Purple: Creativity, luxury, imagination; often seen in beauty and premium services.
Black / Dark Gray: Sophistication, modernity, power; works well for minimalist brands.
White / Light Gray: Cleanliness, space, clarity; essential for readability.

Hubspot-inspired color choices start with deciding the main emotion or message you want your brand to convey.

2. Choose a Clear Color Hierarchy

A strong palette gives each color a job. The approach highlighted in the Hubspot article typically uses:

Primary color: Main brand color for logos, primary buttons, and key elements.
Secondary colors: Supporting hues for backgrounds, sections, or secondary buttons.
Accent color: A contrasting color for highlights, alerts, and important links.
Neutral colors: Whites, grays, and blacks for text, surfaces, and borders.

Defining roles prevents random use of color and keeps your design coherent.

3. Maintain Contrast and Accessibility

Hubspot places strong emphasis on legibility and accessibility. To follow that standard, ensure:

Text contrasts well with backgrounds (aim for WCAG AA contrast ratios).
Important buttons stand out clearly from surrounding sections.
Color is not the only signal for important states (also use icons, labels, or underlines).

High contrast is especially important on mobile, where glare and small screens can make low-contrast designs unreadable.

Step-by-Step Process: Build a Hubspot-Style Palette

Use this practical process, adapted from the Hubspot resource, to design your own website color scheme.

Step 1: Define Your Brand Attributes

Before choosing hex codes, write down a few words that describe your brand, such as:

Professional, reliable, authoritative.
Playful, friendly, energetic.
Minimal, elegant, premium.

These words will guide which color families make the most sense for you.

Step 2: Pick a Primary Brand Color

From your brand attributes, choose one color family as your main color. For example:

A B2B SaaS might choose a calm blue.
A wellness brand might choose a soft green.
A creative agency might choose a vivid purple or coral.

Keep the primary color flexible enough to appear in logos, hero sections, and key navigation elements, similar to how Hubspot uses its own brand orange.

Step 3: Add 1–3 Secondary Colors

Secondary colors support your primary color without competing. Look for:

Adjacent hues on the color wheel for a harmonious look.
Complementary hues for more contrast and energy.

Test secondary colors on sections like feature blocks or alternating backgrounds to ensure they work with your primary tone.

Step 4: Choose a Strong Accent Color

The Hubspot color schemes article emphasizes a distinct accent for CTAs and important links. Your accent should:

Be clearly different from your primary color.
Pass contrast tests against both light and dark backgrounds.
Scale well across hover and active states.

Use this accent sparingly for maximum impact.

Step 5: Build a Neutral Foundation

Neutrals are the quiet backbone of every layout. Hubspot-style designs rely on ranges of:

Very light grays for backgrounds instead of pure white in some areas.
Mid grays for borders, dividers, and icons.
Dark grays or nearly black for text to improve readability.

Define at least three neutrals (light, medium, dark) and reuse them consistently.

Step 6: Create a Reusable Color System

Once your colors are chosen, formalize them into a simple system:

Assign tokens or names (e.g., primary-500, accent-600, neutral-100).
Document usage rules: where to use primary vs. secondary vs. accent.
Include examples of buttons, links, and backgrounds using each token.

This mirrors the structured approach used in the Hubspot design ecosystem and makes collaboration easier.

Applying Hubspot-Inspired Color Schemes to Your Pages

With your palette ready, map colors to specific page elements.

Homepage and Hero Sections

Use your primary color in the hero background or main headline.
Apply the accent color to the main call-to-action button.
Keep supporting text on neutral backgrounds for clarity.

This balances impact with readability, similar to examples shared on the Hubspot blog.

Navigation, Footers, and Forms

Use darker neutrals for navigation bars to separate them from content.
Reserve brand colors for hover states, active links, and icons.
On forms, use a consistent color for input borders and focus states.

Consistent color language trains visitors to recognize important actions quickly.

Content Sections and Blog Layouts

The source article from Hubspot showcases many layouts where color guides scanning. To follow a similar pattern:

Alternate light neutral and soft-tint backgrounds to separate sections.
Use subtle color blocks behind quotes or callout boxes.
Highlight internal links with the accent color, making sure they are legible.

This improves readability on long pages and supports content hierarchy.

Testing and Optimizing Your Color Scheme

A Hubspot-style approach is data-driven. After launching your new palette, measure its impact.

Check Accessibility and Usability

Run automated contrast checks on major templates.
Gather feedback from real users on clarity and comfort.
Watch for spots where users overlook CTAs, then adjust contrast or color intensity.

Small tweaks can significantly improve performance without changing your core brand colors.

Experiment With A/B Tests

Where possible, test variations inspired by Hubspot guidelines:

Different button colors for primary CTAs.
Alternate background tints for pricing or feature sections.
Subtle adjustments to link colors for better visibility.

Use analytics to see which combinations deliver higher click-through and conversion rates.

Next Steps for Implementing Hubspot-Style Color

To move from theory to execution, document your final palette in a shared design system or style guide. Make sure designers, developers, and marketers all follow the same rules so your brand stays consistent everywhere it appears.

If you need help planning strategy, technical SEO, or implementation across multiple platforms, you can explore expert services at Consultevo. Combine strong brand colors with clear structure, and your site can reflect the same thoughtful approach to design that Hubspot demonstrates in its website color schemes resource.

Need Help With Hubspot?

If you want expert help building, automating, or scaling your Hubspot , work with ConsultEvo, a team who has a decade of Hubspot experience.

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