I thought I had a good sense of aesthetics, but I struggled with coming up with a color scheme for my own app. Once you pick colors that look nice, when you put them together, something always seems off! There isn't a unity and it's hard as an analytical thinker to explain why. You just can feel it.
Articles like this helped me out a bit, as well as just trying different things. This includes taking an app or website you like and analyzing the colors they use. It helps to look at their use of saturation and lightness in specific elements (i.e. CTAs are typically more saturated and backgrounds and other elements you wish to mute are less saturated).
In the end, if you can come up with a cohesive color palette, your product definitely looks more polished and professional. You have an overall feeling of confidence in it, even if the code has not changed one bit. It's like suspension of disbelief in a movie. When you hit something that shatters the illusion, you're taken out of the story and just look at the film as a series of filmed events played out in sequence and less like a narrative.
I checked out your website and the app listed on your profile and they definitely looks professional and polished! Would you care to share the resources you used to learn this stuff? Even better if you could write more about your own journey. It's exactly the not-a-designer-by-trade-but-enthusiastic-about-it types whose backgrounds I can relate to the most.
Honestly, it would be challenging to distill it down into a post. I don't think I could convey it well enough.
A lot of the journey is just training your eye to see things you like and ask what makes it the way it is. You just kind of have to develop an eye for white space, colors, visual hierarchy, and more. It's a heavy topic.
Like writing, it takes practice, and when you do create something, it takes a lot of heavy editing and refining to simplify it more and more.
I haven't seen your work, but this to me is generally excellent advice. I wish more people would provide and hear it.
There is a level of effort required to get good at effectively conveying information to others, and it is best learned by critically observing the situations that have done so in your personal experience.
Articles like this helped me out a bit, as well as just trying different things. This includes taking an app or website you like and analyzing the colors they use. It helps to look at their use of saturation and lightness in specific elements (i.e. CTAs are typically more saturated and backgrounds and other elements you wish to mute are less saturated).
In the end, if you can come up with a cohesive color palette, your product definitely looks more polished and professional. You have an overall feeling of confidence in it, even if the code has not changed one bit. It's like suspension of disbelief in a movie. When you hit something that shatters the illusion, you're taken out of the story and just look at the film as a series of filmed events played out in sequence and less like a narrative.