Black and white is becoming increasingly popular as a design color standard. However, making a catching black-and-white design is art requiring great skill and outstanding artistic vision. The typogrpahy and layout have to be truly remarkable in order for the site not to be boring.  But a single other color can magically give life and character to any black-and-white design.Try imagining the 33 sites below as monochromatic. Would they be as effective?

RGA

An amlost classic black and white site except for a few little red elements, such as menu items and links, which turn red on hover.

JonahL

The selected menu item is red in this portfolio.

Loja Birds

1MD

The selected menu item is highlited with red. Plus there are a few bright red elements on every page.

James Chambers

Menu items and links turn orange on hover.

Front-End Design Conference

Grip Limited

There is a lot of orange on the "front page" and less of it on other "pages." However, the design of this site is so unique that it would probably look awesome even without any third color.

204 Beach

A very simple yet elegant site where red could probably be explained as a battle color judging by the content.

Thais Vilanova

This is not the homepage of the website. It is a page that just better illustrates the color treatment. The links and some other elements are uniformely red. But the scattered letters along the right edge of the page are in many subtle hues of red and orange. Together, they all look red, though.

United Pixelworkers

The site uses grey, a product of black and white, for background and a pastel hue of red for links, prices and menu items. 

Needs/Wants Magazine

The design is splendidly clean with a light blue theme.

FullyIllustrated

This portfolio page is the least colorful of all due to absence of large illustrations. It nicely demonstrates the site's color scheme  - lots of black, some white and a touch of blue. Of course, the thumbnails show theri full color on hover.

Oliver Golsing

Blitz

Narrow Design

Soft Facade

Astheria

Logitech

ProductShotPro

Color is scarce here. The site is almost exclusively black and white. However, a few tiny blue elements together with the blue on images water down this monochromatism. 

Elettro-Luce

The menu items become yellow on hover. Yellow is also present in other parts of the site as a decorative design element.

Clockwork

Hovercraft

Typesites

The menu items are highlighted with yellow on hover.

We Are Builders

There is a large yellow header probaly cause that's the company color. The rest of the design is strictly black and white.

MXL4

Besides the obviously green selected menu items, this portfolio displays a very beautiful hover effect on the news and team pages.

AisleOne

Soh Tanaka

This portfolio uses a variety of dark grey hues instead of pure black. The green color simultaniously adds a military atmosphere and a whiff of life.

Bourne

Amilo Car

A variety of colors are used on every page, from bright green to turquoise, but they all fit nicely into a green-looking color scheme within a black-and-white clean design.

Verticis

Room 11

Very bright green-and-yellow frames, lines and other elements are in stark contrast with the grey background of this eye-catching flash portfolio.

DigitalMash

Every menu page has a different color circle. Moreover, each journal entry also gets its own distinct color (such as this one currently on the homepage), which makes up to fourty different colors on this site, one color per page.

Rich Brown

And last, this is not a black-and-white site. There is no black. It is sepia-toned (the color of some ancient photographs) where different hues of brown substitue for those of grey. The color choice doesn't only emphasize the designer's name, but also adds warmth and personality to his portfolio.