How to choose colors for Branding

What do you think of when you hear the word “love?” Whether positive or negative, it mostly likely conjures a stronger emotional response than when you hear a phrase like “bike rack.”

Emotions are powerful and (whether we like it or not) drive our decision making. As a brand, you want to cultivate a strong emotional connection with your customers. The problem is you can’t tell your company’s entire life story in a logo or storefront—but branding colors provide a shortcut straight to your clientele’s hearts.

One of the most famous color theorists, Faber Birren, wrote extensively on the link between colors and our emotional state, particularly in his book Color Psychology and Color Theory. Just like the words “love” and “bike rack” elicit different emotions, colors like red and blue both create different human responses as well. Even more interesting, the same colors tend to provoke similar responses in different people; in other words, yellow evokes similar feelings in people from Montana to Timbuktu. This extends even to shades of individual colors, so deep dark blue and light sky blue will also have different effects.

Color theory goes a lot deeper than “pink is a pretty color.” Psychologists link it to the very evolution of humans; connections with certain colors developed after years of associating them with particular objects. A blood red, for example, puts people on alert for danger nearby; the browns of dirt and rotten food tend to be unappetizing.

This isn’t always accurate—after all, farmers (and chocolate lovers) might love the color brown, and let’s not forget humans evolved to see the color blue only in recent millennia—but when considering millions of years of biological conditioning, it’s easy to see how affiliations to colors goes beyond mere preference… something humanity has known for quite some time now.

Application of branding colors

According to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, how consumers feel about a brand has more pull than what they think about a brand. Pair that with the fact that we know certain colors evoke certain emotions and voila: your brand colors have the ability to impact your sales or performance even more than the products you offer.

Moreover, repetition of the same color can strengthen brand awareness. When was the last time you saw a Coke can that wasn’t red or a Twitter bird that wasn’t sky blue? (Certainly the marketing world learned its lesson from Heinz’s tragic foray into purple ketchup.) Given enough exposure, colors become part of a brand, so you want to encourage this association by using your brand colors consistently.

Just for the sake of organization, here are the most common areas you’ll be using your branding colors:

1. Logo

2. Website

3. Storefront

4. In-store design

5. Staff uniforms

6. Advertisements

What do different branding colors mean?

We’ve spoken enough about the abstracts for brandings colors—let’s dive into the hard facts of color meanings (or at least some guidelines). Here’s a summary of brand color meanings and the effect that different branding colors can have on people:

Red — Red stands for passion, excitement and anger. It can signify importance and command attention.

Orange — Orange stands for playfulness, vitality and friendliness. It is invigorating and evokes energy.

Yellow — Yellow evokes happiness, youth and optimism, but can also seem attention-grabbing or affordable.

Green — Green evokes stability, prosperity, growth and a connection to nature.

Light Blue — A light shade of blue exudes tranquility, trust, openness. It can also signify innocence.

Dark Blue — Dark blue stands for professionalism, security and formality. It is mature and trustworthy.

Purple — Purple can signify royalty, creativity and luxury.

Pink — Pink stands for femininity, youth and innocence. It ranges from modern to luxurious.

Brown — Brown creates a rugged, earthy, old-fashioned look or mood.

White — White evokes cleanliness, virtue, health or simplicity. It can range from affordable to high-end.

Gray — Gray stands for neutrality. It can look subdued, classic, serious, mysterious or mature.

Black — Black evokes a powerful, sophisticated, edgy, luxurious and modern feeling.

Keep in mind that the effect of your branding colors depends on the style and design they are used in, as well as the color combinations you choose. This is an abridged version, our connection to color goes lot deeper than this—for example, too much yellow can actually cause anxiety.