How to Choose and Apply a Global Brand Colour for Your Author Website

Introduction

Brand colours are the cornerstone of creating a visually cohesive and professional author website. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to choose the perfect brand colour to represent your author identity, apply it across your website using the Breakdance page builder, and effortlessly update it as your branding evolves. Whether you’re unsure where to start or looking to refine your palette, this step-by-step guide will ensure your website captures your audience’s attention and reflects your unique style.

The Breakdance Colour Palette

There are 5 default colours in the Breakdance Global Palette

• Brand
• Text
• Headings
• Links
• Background

The first thing to notice is the colours in this palette are TASK orientated. Each colour has a job.

BRAND is the primary colour for the website and I use it for calls to action items such as buttons and accenting elements like dividers, lines and borders.

Text, headings, links and background are exactly what they say they are.

Brand Colour

To get all these colours we start with one. The Brand Colour.

This is not a colour theory course and I am not an artist but if you are unsure what to pick as the brand colour of your website go take a look at the websites of other authors in your genre.

Specifically the buttons on their website.

The buttons calling the visitor to action should be a consistent colour throughout the site. Look through as many author websites in your genre as you can and make a note of the button colours that stand out from the backgrounds and the book covers. 

That’s your starting brand colour.

If you want to make your life a little easier seeing exactly what colours your favourite websites are using install the Hoverify browser extension.

I say starting brand colour because as you’re about to see changing the colour palette on your website to reflect your author brand only takes a few clicks. You don’t have to spend hours or days agonising over your brand colour because it really only takes a few clicks to change if you don’t like your initial choices.

For the Dirk Volcano website I’ve chosen a genre neutral YELLOW as his BRAND colour, specifically the hex colour code of #fcb900 commonly known as SELECTIVE YELLOW. It’s an eye catching colour that will stand out from the rest of the page, especially on book listings.

If you’re not already in the Breakdance editor go to the main WordPress admin dashboard and edit the STYLE GUIDE page.

• Inside the Breakdance Editor
• Click the dot dot dot menu
• Select Global Settings > Colors
• In the input box beside BRAND I’ll the hex code #fcb900.

Live Updates

As soon as I enter a valid hex code all the buttons, which use the brand colour by default, change right away.

Next I’ll click on the BRAND div inside the colour grid we set up inside the style guide. Inside the DESIGN TAB I’ll click on BACKGROUND and set the colour to BRAND. The background of the DIV changes to the BRAND colour right away.

Let’s say that after the site goes live I want to change the brand colour for my website to RED. 

When I change the BRAND colour to RED with the Global Settings in Breakdance it will instantly change ALL elements assigned with that colour across the entire website, not just this page. We don’t have to go around all the pages and posts in the website manually updating each element. We can just go to my brand colour in Global Settings and change it everywhere at once.

If I don’t like the new colour I can change back to #fcb900.

Summary

Selecting and applying a brand colour is essential for a cohesive author website. This lesson guides you through choosing a striking brand colour that aligns with your genre, applying it sitewide using Breakdance’s Global Settings, and updating it effortlessly in the future. By mastering this process, you’ll ensure your website reflects your author identity while maintaining design consistency and professionalism.

Take this opportunity to look through other websites you like. What colours are they using on their buttons, for their headers, footers, fonts and backgrounds? What colour schemes do authors in your genre use on their sites? Start making notes of colour schemes you like and where they fit on your palette.