The effective use of color can increase brand recognition by up to 80%. But how can you know what color will work best for your brand and website? This article will help you determine which colors best reflect the feelings you want to evoke from your audience. Understanding color psychology and what personality traits each color represents can guide your marketing and branding decisions.
Branding is all about storytelling – it’s how humans connect. Many different factors impact our perception of color, such as our cultural upbringing, personal preferences, gender, and our subconscious emotional connections. This is learned behavior based on our experience with colors throughout our life.
The Emotions of Color
Sentinel Trust, Obermayer, Verrill
Burns Levinson, Davis Malm, Sullivan
JAMS, Sherin and Lodgen, DLA Piper
G Greene, Mintz, Juna Financial Solutions
CBT Architects, Winston & Strawn, Prince Lobel
Shearman Sterling, Morgan Lewis, Clifford Chance
How top companies use color in their logos:
In the graphic below we see some of the top brands’ logos categorized by their dominant colors. You can see that within each color group, there are companies from a variety of industries:
Image source: Canva
Although it may be tempting to use multiple colors for your brand, we highly recommend limiting it to 2 or fewer. Doing so will increase memorability and strengthen brand recognition. If you’d like to have additional colors in your palette we recommend using these as secondary elements throughout your marketing materials (small links or buttons on the website, subtle headlines within advertisements, etc.) Your logo and other key brand components should always reflect your main 2 brand colors.
If you need help deciding which colors you should use for your brand, let us know, we’d love to help narrow it down.
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