While thoughts might occur to you out of the blue, social media sites are using the color of communication, loyalty, and trust to create a blueprint for a successful site.

Different colors trigger different feelings in the human brain, which changes how the person reacts.

“Blue is a trigger in our brain that makes us feel comfortable,” John Madden, web design teacher of five years, said. “Blue is a calming color that symbolizes communication in our brains and also shows trustworthiness. For example, if you’re doing things online, a lot of people feel safe with what they are doing with cyber security.”

“Usually I have my students look things up online, and there is a psychology to colors. I’ll usually have one group pick a mood or a theme, and from that theme, they have to choose what color goes with that specific mood,” Madden said.

“Businesses host surveys to find what shade of color to use for their logo and theme. In one situation, they had the same information but typed in different colors and whichever was chosen more was the more successful color,” Michael Anderson, business teacher, said. “From these surveys they found that the color blue is the world’s favorite color.”

“The color theory is basically different colors trigger different emotions,” Madden said.

The color theory is the interaction of colors in a design through three key words: complementation, contrast, and vibrancy.

“Blue is the most pleasing color associated with white and gray and it send calming chemicals through the brain,” Briana Green, junior, said.

Calming chemicals in the brain are caused by hormones and how the eyes take in the color. When the eyes take in the color, it clams the mind.

“Most business’ websites get away from the really dark colors like black, and these websites try to use different shades [of common colors]. For example, twitter is a lighter shade of blue than Facebook, which is a much darker blue,” Madden said.

The color red is used mainly for cooking websites, along with some orange, yellow, and sometimes black. Restaurants like McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s use the darker colors like red, yellow, orange, and black for both their logo and website. These colors are the colors that represent fire, which is incorporated into cooking.

“Information is what people are really more attracted to when they go to Google. They are not persuaded by flashy colors and images of the design,” Darren Rothermel, marketing teacher, said. “But I think that blue is appropriate for a social media site.”

According to Blueleadz.com, blue is used as a marketing color because blue follows the patterns and designs that attract people to bring in customers. Design patterns ois a way of capturing ideas and communication ideas to share with the audience. The color blue is welcoming to the eyes of customers. The color blue portrays safety and reliability, and the color blue can disappear into the background and not be to distracting like a hot pink would.