The world is alive with colour, and different colours influence our feelings, thoughts and behaviour in many ways. Certain colours are even associated with physical reactions, like increased appetite, heightened blood pressure or calm and serenity.
There are reasons why musicians often wait in green rooms before going onstage, why doctors’ waiting rooms are light grey or beige and why fast food brands so often use yellow in their logos. These are all examples of colour psychology in action.
Your visual identity strongly impacts how the public perceives your brand, and the use of colour is one of the most important elements. Most people don’t think too much about how colour shapes their purchasing decisions, but your choice of colours plays a major part in the public’s first impression of you and your products. In fact, colour is responsible for up to 90% of an initial impression.
Your colour palette is a vital ingredient of your brand assets, which increase brand awareness and play a huge role in purchasing decisions. The colours that you use should reflect your brand and the kind of customers you want to attract.
This article is the Anchor Digital guide to colour psychology in branding: the feelings that different colours evoke and how you can use these associations to colour your marketing.
What Is Colour Psychology in Marketing?
Ask any visual artist or interior designer: colour affects us in subtle and profound ways. The use of colour as a communication tool and the impact it can have on our minds and bodies is known as colour psychology.
Of course, not everyone has the exact same experience of every colour. Difference in personal tastes, cultural contexts, life experiences and other factors leads to expected variations. Yet there are some pretty universal meanings assigned to certain colours.
Of course, most colours can have more than one meaning, depending on the context. Red can signal power or romance, but it can also signal anger or warning. It’s the colour of STOP signs, incorrect test answers and overdrawn bank accounts. Green is a calming colour used as a symbol of nature and good luck, but it can also symbolise envy or illness. Black is a sign of luxury and status but also a colour of mourning.
In marketing, colour psychology is researching how colour affects people’s emotions and behaviour, and implementing it into your branding strategy. Colour psychology is about choosing the right colours for your brand assets to make a strong first impression, build up your brand identity and make your logo and other assets easy to remember.
Why Colour Is Important In Branding
In a matter of seconds, your brand assets communicate certain meanings. Colour is the first thing potential customers see and one of the main reasons for your brand assets to stick in their mind. More than a matter of good looks or aesthetics, colour psychology in branding is about the particular thoughts, feelings, connotations and associations colours evoke for the public.
Choosing the dominant colour for your logo and brand assets should be done with an understanding of your product’s benefits and the impression you wish to give. Here’s a quick look into the psychology of some of the most common colours in branding and marketing:
Red (e.g. Coca-Cola, Target, Netflix): Red is the most emotionally-charged colour and is commonly used to symbolise passion, excitement and energy. Red can stimulate appetite and is used to create a sense of urgency, but should be avoided in industries like finance where the closest associations are negative.
Orange (e.g. Dunkin Donuts, Penguin Books): Orange can be used to get attention (traffic cones) or create a warm sense of familiarity (pumpkins and autumn). When paired with black (see the Harley-Davidson logo), orange can strike a nice balance between serious and playful.
Yellow (e.g. McDonalds, Ferrari): Despite being associated with joy, orange is the hardest colour to visually process. It can create a sense of warmth and sunny optimism, but it can also invoke anxiety, being associated with police tape and warning signs.
Green (e.g. BP, Starbucks): the easiest colour for our eyes to process, green symbolises nature, fertility and safety. But it can also represent stagnation and boredom.
Blue (e.g. Facebook, Samsung, PayPal, IBM): Blue symbolises loyalty, logic, trust and clear communication. It’s a popular primary colour for brands, particularly in finance, who see it as a safe bet. On the downside, it’s also the colour of cold and sadness. Not many food brands use blue as it’s seen as the least appetising colour.
Black (e.g. Prada, BBC, WWF): Black is a powerful shade commonly used by brands who are sophisticated or serious. Due to its association with death, black is rarely used in the health industry. However, for luxury brands that want to convey prestige and elegance, it’s often the perfect choice.
Implementing Colour Psychology in Your Branding Strategy
In branding, colour psychology is one of your most effective tools. Here’s how to bring it into your own approach:
Start with an emotion
When choosing a colour palette for your own brand, consider the emotions you’d like to inspire in your own audience. Confidence? Trust? Excitement?
Choose a colour that’s authentic to you
Make sure your colour palette feels appropriate to who you are and what you do. Make sure you don’t stray too far from the expectations for your industry, unless you’re really trying to shake things up.
Choose a colour that appeals to your audience
Think about the demographics you’re trying to attract—their ages, genders, income brackets, etc.—and use that to help guide your marketing colour psychology.
Be consistent
Consistency is always crucial when establishing a brand identity. When you choose a colour palette, make sure it stays the same across different touchpoints and platforms to avoid confusion and mixed emotions.
Run colour tests
You can’t always predict how your target audience will respond to a particular colour, let alone the countless varieties of shades and tones it can appear in. A/B testing lets you try out two different colour schemes in your ads and on your website to see which one gets the best results.
Get the Most Out Of Your Branding Strategy with Anchor
Colour psychology in branding is just one of the many brand design services you can choose from when you partner with Anchor Digital.
If you’re a new business, we’ll help you establish a clear brand identity and give you the tools to express that across different forms of communication. If you’re an established business, we’ll help you rebrand to reach a new audience.
Our services include research into your target audience, establishing a tone of voice and creating your logo and brand assets.
If you need a web design agency, we have state-of-the-art tools and techniques plus over a decade’s worth of experience to create a responsive, optimised and wholly professional website. We’re a full-service web design and development agency, so we’ll keep your project in-house instead of shuffling you between offices. Our creatives conceive powerful designs, including the right colour palette for your brand, and our developers code them into your site.
Want to find out more? Get in touch with the Anchor team.
