Should "Deletion successful" confirmation be red, or green?

Question

What color should a deletion confirmation message be?

This is related to the question Should 'yes, delete it' be red, or green?, but different because this question asks about a passive confirmation message and not the active delete button.

One might say green, the typical success color, but the delete button was red and it looks weird. Making the message red, because you just deleted something, also makes no sense because red is supposed to be for errors.

In my specific case it's about rejecting or accepting proposals. The options are:

(success)

(danger)

(warning)

(info)

Making rejected bold puts more emphasis on the difference between rejected and accepted. The text could also be changed to "You have successfully rejected the proposal," which also puts more emphasis on the actual action regardless of the color.

Using no color, a grey background with black text, looks weird. It doesn't look like a notification anymore at all, so I don't really consider it an option.

Finally someone suggested having no message at all, since the proposal will be deleted from the list of proposals. That deletion in itself should be enough feedback, according to that person. I personally disagree, though. It feels weird.

Overall, I lean towards green or blue (success or info). Red messages should be a failure of some kind, and the yellow warning also makes me feel like there is additional action I should take. Green doesn't look like a rejection (the reject button is red, the approve button is green) and blue also feels off for some reason.

Which option should be used?

Answer 1

Don't start with choosing colors!

1. First, distinguish notifications from errors

This is a common point of confusion with UX. Consider these two messages:

• Sorry, the app has crashed - This is an error, and should be highlighted as an error (i.e. pop up alert, dialog, red button, etc).
• You have rejected a date with Kate Upton - Although this sounds like an error, it is NOT an error. It's a confirmation notification that indicates a negative choice.

In your situation, confirming a proposal rejection is not an error, it's a notification.

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2. Then, make your layout decision

Now that you know it's a notification, color and layout choice should conform with other notifications in your app/site.

So it's impossible to answer the question of color choice without seeing what the positive (accepted proposal) notification looks like.

Let's assume you have a pair of notifications: Proposal accepted and Proposal rejected.

• Generally nowadays it's not a great idea to use colored backgrounds to distinguish the two, because it becomes difficult for the user to recognize them both as notifications.
• It's better to choose a common layout for notifications (e.g. black background, or toasts), and then convey the accept/reject message INSIDE the notification.

• If you need to highlight the accept/reject status more clearly, you can use status icons or colored swatches to highlight the status, but preserve the consistent layout of the notification (in this example, the common black background)

The specific color, shape and animation of the notifications will depend on your app layout and color palette, but whatever it is it should be consistent between Accept and Reject so that both notifications are clearly perceived as the same species.

Answer 2

I would recommend moving away from colour for confirmation messages in this case.

I say this because it can be confusing for the user especially since you are using red and green for "Reject" and "Accept" so when they have successfully done an action moving from red to green can be disorientating and unworthy extra cognitive overflow.

Take a look at Google how they are doing it with what they call snackbars and toasts.

By eliminating colour and using language such as "Successfully" like you mentioned it becomes less about the mental model associated with certain colours and more about the message.

Edit:
Have just seen Daniel answered with a very similar solution!

If you have other messages then you pretty much have to follow the pattern you have created.

So if this is considered a successful completion of an action and all other actions that are successful get a green message, then this needs to get a green message.

Answer 3

I find that the grey background with white text gives a very neutral feel and looks good on the eye as well. Unless it's good or bad, I would avoid green or red.

Answer 4

The message indicates a successful action, so if you're using color cues, this message should use the color of success: green, in your case. The danger color (red, in this example) should be used when the user is about to do something destructive (e.g. "Are you sure you want to delete this?"), but the message you're asking about is for when the user has already done it. The danger has passed, so you shouldn't use color cues that could indicate danger still being present. Unless, of course, the situation is dangerous for some other reason.

Answer 5

Already there are couple of good answers urging you from moving away from colors. I do agree with them. Considering the color blindness/cultural relations, colors should always be used as a secondary mode of conveying any information. But then again, if you are working with an application which already has alerts for success, failure which are using color cues then you would want to be consistent.

In that scenario, I'd stick with color in which all successes are shown. It is a confirmation of a user action. I will augment the message with a appropriate symbol of Info, Success tick or a wrong cross or anything else as applicable.

In addition, if you use red, assuming it is used across application for error, quickly initiates a response from user. s/he expects ways to correct any error that s/he must have encountered/made. In this case there is no error, so it would be a false alarm. You would not want to create a system which is not consistent and programatically, deliberately creates false alarms. This will also have an impact on your other error messages. Users will have some intellectual load to process to differentiate from a negative confirmation vs an actual error.

Furthermore you are assuming a rejection or any negative, deleting action is inherently dangerous/bad etc. Which definitely may not be the case. An error message which differs from norm will give an impression that the action user performed is somehow considered in a bad light. You would not want to do that.

The answers which steer clear of colors also show it in a message agnostic way. Your notifications and alerts should not vary on the content. Those should be more generic in nature, fundamentally denoting a success or failure of an operation.