Choose a Background Colour for Your Author Website
Learn how to select a background colour for your author website to enhance readability, provide contrast, and align with your branding using Breakdance settings.
Introduction
The background colour of your author website significantly impacts its readability and aesthetic appeal. In this lesson, we’ll guide you through selecting and setting a background colour using Breakdance’s global settings. We’ll explore how subtle off-white tones, like #F9FAFB, can create a professional and visually appealing design. You’ll also learn how to customise background elements, use borders, and refine your global colour palette for a cohesive and engaging website experience.
Background
I recommend sticking with Breakdance’s default off white colour #F9FAFB as the background colour.
It’s not as harsh as a pure white background and provides strong contrast to the rest of the palette we have chosen so far.
We could just leave it Blank to assign the default background colour but lets call it out specifically so we can assign it inside the Style Guide
- Paste #F9FAFB inside the Background global colour setting
- Click on the Background Div
- Change Background to the Background global palette choice
The box look weird with just the text and what appears to be empty space so I’ll add a border
- Click on the Background Div again
- Open the container drop down
- Give the Div a 1 pixel width solid line border with the Global heading palette.
Add Alt Text and Alt Heading Divs
We have two colours in our global palette that don’t appear on the colour grid.
- Alt Text
- Alt Heading
Let’s add those now.
- Duplicate the Background Div Twice
- In the first duplicated Div change the heading to Alt Text
- Change the Div background to Alt Text
- In the Second Duplicated Div change the heading to Alt Heading
- Change the Div Background to Alt Heading
You may be wondering what’s the point of that? The background’s in the last three boxes in the Grid look the same. And they do. For now, in this build but this is the core build. The jumping off point for branding and styling an author website into any design you choose and in those designs the colour palette could be more adventurous but you’ll be able to track that using the colour grid.
Summary
This lesson covered the importance of selecting a background colour that enhances your website’s readability and complements your design. By using Breakdance’s default off-white and adding custom global palette elements, you’ve created a foundation for consistent and professional styling. Explore other author websites for inspiration and refine your palette to reflect your genre and personal brand.
