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The Return Of Cream

Posted by Andrew Faulkner on December 12th, 2005.

Andrew Faulkner is the admin at fadtastic. Andrew prides himself on standards-based, accessible web design in the city of Nottingham, UK. He believes in aesthetically pleasing accessible design and that 'standards compliant does not equal boring.'

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Think back now to the late nineties and imagine an amateur webpage - got it? Now what colours does it contain? I can bet that your background is a creamy beige colour. Yes?

The very fact that many websites with cream backgrounds existed put them out of fashion. Every time I experiment and set my background to #FFFFCC I shudder and think that it can’t possibly look good no matter what I do to it. But I’ve been proven wrong.

A new breed of sites have sprung up all sporting slick cream/beige backgrounds:

http://cmdstud.khlim.be/~tvrolix/case_prema.1/

http://www.dream.hu/

http://www.cctresource.com/fr/entreprise.html

But why is it back in? How have designers made it cool again? Personally I think that colours do tend to go in and out of fashion naturally but solid cream has stayed away for a long time and isn’t quite in yet. I think designers have pushed the boundaries a little in these examples and used subtle gradients, textures or borders to make the cream background seem interesting.

So my questions are:

Will solid cream ever look good again?
How can we make out of fashion colours look good in our designs?

( 11 so far )

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I don’t know if the world is quite ready for this fad yet. The color has the effect of making great sites bland.

m_333
December 12th, 2005
#

Yes it does. But surely you agree that the examples above look great? That’s the point - how do you make a bland colour look good?

Andrew Faulkner
December 12th, 2005
#

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop..
The world may never know.

I agree that the layout/design/concept is great, but the color still dredges up bad memories of the beige behemoths from the days of yore.

Although I am digging the Orange on http://cmdstud.khlim.be/~tvrolix/case_prema.1/

m_333
December 12th, 2005
#

The orange on that first link really makes the site pop while the cream helps soften the look. A stark white background would be too harsh. It’s funny because I used a beige and orange background on an app recently. Looked really nice. :)

btw: nice fixed comments. ;)

Jonathan Snook
December 13th, 2005
#

A stark white background would be too harsh.

I agree. I just never thought cream could look good again. I take my hat off to these designers.

btw: nice fixed comments.

Thanks for the inspiration. ;)

Andrew Faulkner
December 13th, 2005
#

Just realised that http://www.rubyonrails.org/ have relaunched with a cream/white/red colour scheme.

Andrew Faulkner
December 14th, 2005
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I think when coupled with something daring such as a bright orange (as demonstrated by your first example), or perhaps even something subtle like a nice chocolate brown (second example).. cream works. Otherwise, I don’t like to see it too much. Far too boring.

Jem
December 17th, 2005
#

And another one:

http://www.cafemet.co.uk/

Cream and chocolate must now be in.

Andrew Faulkner
December 19th, 2005
#

I see cream and chocolate as emerging alternatives for various shades of gray. Not all industries want their sites to have the look of metal :) my company has used cream and beige a lot as an alternative to excessive gray. It’s true though that a bright or deep accent color is needed to keep the color scheme from looking to bland or neutral. Texture also helps (lines or dots or gradients or something).

Rachel
December 28th, 2005
#

How about faded cream!

http://www.kineda.com

Terry
January 10th, 2006
#

Terry. Thanks for the spot. Nice redesign from Kineda there.

Andrew Faulkner
January 11th, 2006
#

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