The Psychology of Colours in Branding: How to Choose the Right Palette for Your Business

Choosing your brand colour palette can seem like an easy decision, but it holds a lot more weight than you might think. Colours have a significant effect on people’s perception, and can even cause someone to make a subconscious decision about your brand before they read your company name or slogan. Since your brand colours strongly affect people’s first impression of your company, you want to make sure you choose ones that accurately reflect your goals and values. Lucky for you, in this blog, we’ll discuss how colour affects people’s perception of your brand and how to choose the right palette for your business.

First Impressions

As mentioned above, a large part of the weight brand colours hold is their effect on your audience’s first impression. The first thing a potential customer is going to see is your brand colours, whether it’s in a social media ad, on your website, or on your storefront. Subconsciously, this immediately impacts their perception of your brand, so ensuring they have the right perception is critical. Make sure the colours you choose align with your brand identity, industry, and values – more on that later.

Interior Branding

Additionally, if first impressions didn’t hold enough weight, your colour palette will also affect your interior branding, an essential component of your in-person brand experience. When customers or clients visit your retail or office location, their surroundings play a big part in their experience. Colour and other interior design choices can affect their mood, comfort, and even purchase decisions! If your interior branding results in people feeling overstimulated or doesn’t match your products or values, customers may not be compelled to buy from your brand or make a return visit.

The Psychology of Colours

Colours can have a variety of connotations and reactions based on the societal meanings they carry, and can even change from culture to culture. Here are some of the most common connotations associated with colours in branding, both positive and negative:

• Blue – security, strength, wisdom, trust, suppresses appetite, coldness, unfriendliness

• Purple – wisdom, wealth, sophistication, decadence, moodiness, excess, femininity

• Orange – confidence, creativity, courage, warmth, caution, frustration, deprivation, sluggishness, immaturity

• Red – excitement, energy, power, fearlessness, passion, urgency, hunger, anger, warnings, danger, defiance, aggression, pain

• Green – life, relaxation, health, prosperity, hope, freshness, boredom, stagnation, blandness

• Yellow – youthfulness, happiness, optimism, creativity, extroversion, warmth, fear, irrationality, anxiety

• Black – sophistication, power, elegance, luxury, oppression, coldness, evil, death, mourning

• White – clean, simple, pure, modern, innocent, pristine, sterile, plain, boring, empty

• Pink – femininity, youthfulness, imaginative, quirky, childish, rebellious

As you can see, colours can carry multiple very different connotations. This is where your logo, brand name, shades of colours, combinations of colours, images, and your slogan can work together to clarify which association your audience should make.

Combining Colours

Now, just because two colours reflect your brand well, doesn’t mean they go well together. Most brands choose two or three colours that work well together and complement each other in various branding or marketing mediums. It can be helpful if one of these colours is more neutral to use as a background colour. Many brands also use different shades of their base colours to add variety and make their media more visually aesthetic.

All that being said, here are some colours that work well together to give you a starting point:

• Blue and orange (complementary colours)

• Purple and yellow (complementary colours)

• Red and green (complementary colours but can feel Christmas-y)

• Blue and green (natural colours)

• Green, blue, and purple (cool colours)

• Red, orange, and yellow (warm colours)

• Yellow, blue, and red (primary colours)

• Blue and pink

• Yellow and red

• Purple and pink

• Black and red

• Blue and white

We hope this blog has given you a better understanding of how brand colours can impact your audience and informed your decision-making. Need help with your brand colours or logo? unLOCKEd can help! Contact us today to schedule a kick off call.

Author: Sarah Murphy