Design
Jan 8, 2026
5 min read
Color is a budget
Treat every hue as money spent. The sites that feel expensive are the ones that spend almost nothing, almost everywhere.
This site has exactly one color. Everything else is near-black, off-white, and the space between them. That wasn't a style choice — it was a budget decision, and budgets are what make choices real.
Spending rules
When color is a budget, you write spending rules. Mine: the accent buys attention, so it only appears where I want attention spent — the name, the labels, the numbers, the things you can click toward. Body copy never gets it. Backgrounds never get it. The moment the accent decorates, it stops directing.
Why restraint reads as expensive
Luxury goods understand this: one material, obsessively handled, beats ten materials adequately handled. A page with one hue used precisely implies the confidence to leave the rest alone. A page with six hues implies six people won an argument each.
Pick the color like you'll pay for every pixel it covers. You will — in coherence.