Trying to find a solid color scheme for your website? Let’s take a look at what the big dogs use to brand their sites. For purposes of this article, we will dumb color schemes down to two colors. Keep this in mind — when inventing colors for your site, it’s easier to start with two primary colors and add color variety as you go along.

Yahoo! Search - Baby Blue with Red Highlights
Yahoo uses a pretty basic color scheme, baby blue for the undertones with striking red for the logo and other decals. For icons and smaller images, they go wild and use a rainbow of colors to add some life to the site. The result is a fun “family-friendly” homepage.

Google Search - Blue with Green Highlights
This is as basic as it gets. Google uses the default web colors of blue links and black font. They clean it up with a little green here and there, and “brand” the site with a colorful logo. Makes for a very user-friendly site that doesn’t intrude on the functionality.

digg - Blue with Yellow Highlights
Digg takes one from the books, using lots of blue with bright yellow for the important content. In special areas they also use shades of green for a Google-inspired touch.

Live Search - Teal with Blue Highlights
Microsoft really dugg a new one for Live Search. They tweaked their original MSN design, using nearly all blue tones. Most of the color is a teal gradient, and links/images are either blue or white.

OpenPost.net - Blue with Yellow Highlights
Not unlike digg, OpenPost uses lots of blue with a yellow logo. The blue creates a familiar and uninvasive mood, while the yellow adds a distinctive touch of personality.

YouTube - Blue with Red Highlights
A bit of a Yahoo! feel going on here. YouTube uses Blue for the important content with a red logo. However, much of the content is backed by a light gray that creates a subtle back drop for the video content.

As you can see, there is a clear trend here. Blue is present in nearly every website. Why is this? Perhaps it is because the web was born in black and blue. Or maybe the color blue is more important than we think. As a rule of thumb, when in doubt with your color scheme, stick to blue.