In fact, colors are so crucial when it comes to the buying decisions of your customers. One study even found that 85 percent of shoppers place color as the primary reason for why they buy a particular product.
Color is life, for a world without color seems dead. As a flame produces light, light produces color. As intonation lends color to the spoken word, color lends spiritually realized sound to form. Harmony implies balance, symmetry of forces.- Johannes Itten, from The Art of Color
Colors are able to trigger us on a psychological level and can influence purchasing decisions and different actions.
When it comes to choosing the perfect colors for your Brand you must invest your time and energy to research the best color for your product/service.
Choosing Colors for Your Brand
Establishing a solid identity is super important for any brand. When it comes to creating your brand, the top things you want to consider include:
Creating a sense of trust and belief
Establishing professionalism
Establishing the overall vibe/tone
Working out what you stand for as a brand
Making consumers feel comfortable
Making consumers feel confident in what you are offering
Creating life long brand identity
Of course, there are many other factors to consider, but one of the most overlooked factor is, you guessed it- color.
Let's Learn Some Color Theory
Hue - name and properties/mixture of a color that enables it to be perceived
Brilliance/Brightness - how light or dark a color is
Saturation - the level and mixture of white, black, grey or complimentary
included in color
Extension - proportions of color
Simultaneous - shifting of colors to complementary
Color Agent and Color Effect
Color Agent is the physically or definable colorant.
Color Effect is the psychophysiological color reality.
Color Expression
Color is not only experienced and understood visually, but also psychologically and emotionally.
Yellow
Yellow is the color of sunshine. It’s associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Yellow produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy.
Shades of yellow (when gray is added) are visually unappealing because they lose cheerfulness and become dingy.
Dull (dingy) yellow represents caution, decay, sickness, and jealous.
Light yellow is associated with intellect, freshness, and joy.
RED
Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.
Light red represents joy, sexuality, passion, sensitivity, and love.
Pink signifies romance, love, and friendship. It denotes feminine qualities and passiveness.
Dark red is associated with vigor, willpower, rage, anger, leadership, courage, longing, malice, and wrath.
Brown suggests stability and denotes masculine qualities.
Reddish-brown is associated with harvest and fall.
Blue
Passive from the point of view of material space. Always cool and shadowy. Atmospheric.
Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.
When dimmed, blue suggests fear, grief, and perdition.
Light blue is associated with health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness.
Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.
Green
Intermediate between yellow and blue. Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility.
Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety.
If the green inclines towards yellow, an energetic sense of nature is felt. Activated by orange, it assumes vulgar cast.
If it inclines towards blue, cold and vigorous aggressiveness.
Dark green is associated with ambition, greed, jealousy and is also commonly associated with money.
Yellow-green can indicate sickness, cowardice, discord, and jealousy.
Aqua is associated with emotional healing and protection.
Olive green is the traditional color of peace.
Orange
Mixture of yellow and red. Maximum radiant activity and solar luminosity. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics.
Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.
Orange is the color of fall and harvest.
In heraldry, orange is symbolic of strength and endurance.
Suggests a range from festive to when whitened, a loss of character. When diluted with black, declines into dull and withered brown.
By lightening the brown, beige tones achieved suggesting warmth and quiet atmospheric quality.
Dark orange can mean deceit and distrust.
Red-orange corresponds to desire, sexual passion, pleasure, domination, aggression, and thirst for action.
Gold evokes the feeling of prestige. The meaning of gold is illumination, wisdom, and wealth. Gold often symbolizes high quality.
Violet
Violet combines the stability of blue and the energy of red and is associated with royalty.
It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition.
It conveys wealth and extravagance.
Violet is associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic as well as chaos, death and exaltation.
Solitude and dedication in blue-violet.
Divine love and spirituality in red-violet.
Light violet evokes romantic and nostalgic feelings.
Dark violet evokes gloom and sad feelings. It can cause frustration.
Seven Color Contrasts
Contrast of Hue
Light - Dark Contrast
Cold - Warm Contrast
Complementary Contrast
Two colors are called “complementary” when mixed together they produce a neutral gray.
Complementary colors are opposite each other on the Color Wheel.
Analogous colors are any three colors which are side by side on a 12 Hue Color Wheel.
Some examples of complementary colors include:
Simultaneous Contrast
Results from the fact that for any given color, the eye simultaneously requires the complementary color, and generates it spontaneously if it is not already present.
The simultaneously generated complementary color occurs as a sensation in the eye of the beholder, and is not objectively present. It cannot be photographed.
Contrast of Saturation
Now After We are Experts of Color,
Let's Explore How We Can Apply It
The Color Scheme of Your Brand
Choosing the right color for your brand is important, but choosing the right color for your website is just as important.
Once you have understood the psychological influence of each color, you need to turn your attention to your audience.
What types of emotions are you trying to arouse in your most desired customers?
By understanding what motivates and inspires your customers, it can help you to choose the appropriate colors for your website and for your call to actions.
Here are a list of emotions that you may be trying to evoke in your customers and the colors you should consider using-
Excitement: red
Stimulation of appetite: red
Impulse purchases: red
Grab attention: yellow
Trust and security: blue
Subscribe: orange
Confidence: orange
Health: green
Relaxation: green
Imagination: purple
Creative: purple
Take into Consideration the Gender of your Audience
Here is a breakdown of favorite and least favorite colors by gender-
Men’s Favorite Colors (in order from most favorite to least)
Blue
Green
Black
Red
Orange
Grey
White
Brown
Yellow
Women’s Favorite Colors (from most to least)
Blue
Purple
Green
Red
Black
Orange
Yellow
Brown
White
Grey
Here are a list of favorable colors to use dependent on different age brackets (colors are listed in order from most favorable to least):
1-18: blue, green, red, orange, gray
19-24: blue, green, purple, red, orange, yellow, brown, white, black
25-35: blue, green, purple, orange, red, brown, black, white, yellow
50-69: blue, purple, red, orange, yellow, gray, black
70+: blue, white
Don’t underestimate the importance of choosing the right Brand color.
Colors are able to trigger us on a psychological level and can influence purchasing decisions and different actions.
When it comes to choosing the perfect colors for your Brand identity and website, be sure to –
Pay attention to the mission and intention of your overall brand
Research what your audience is most attracted to- consider their gender, age and what feelings you wish to evoke
Pay attention to the different colors and their psychological triggers
Choose a color palette of two complimenting colors
Be sure to avoid personal biases and picking colors just because they are your favourite
Check what your competitors are doing and piggyback off what has worked for them
Keep testing and assessing the colors you have chosen, consider running split tests
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