Why Colour Matters For Your Brand

When you decide to start a business, there’s a lot to think about – business strategy, staffing solutions, and honing your USP – so crafting your brand identity isn’t always at the top of your list.

When bringing your brand vision to life, visual elements significantly influence how your brand will be perceived. Whether it’s your typography, colour scheme, or logo, potential customers will judge your brand by what they see.

How colour psychology impacts your brand

The colours you choose for your logo, website and brand communications hugely influence the impression your brand leaves on a potential customer. Colours have intuitive feelings attached to them – think yellow for happiness, and red for danger or passion – that your audience can attach to your brand.

When researching how colour psychology can impact consumer decision-making and brand evaluation, HubSpot found that, staggeringly, up to 90% of a consumer’s initial impression of a brand comes from colour. The research also found that colour can increase brand awareness and recognition by 80%, which is absolutely essential in a saturated market.

Considering that 93% of consumers make purchasing decisions based on visuals alone, solidifying your brand identity should be a business priority.

What does your colour scheme say about your brand?

When it comes to branding colours, there are many variables to consider that can impact how a consumer feels about your brand – like whether you choose a warm or cool colour, the tone of the colour, and what other colours are in the palette.

However, using colour psychology, you can estimate how consumers may perceive your brand’s visual identity.

1. Red, orange and yellow

Red is a bold colour that elicits strong emotions and feelings – think passion, love, anger and danger. However, it can also be playful and adventurous. If your brand is loud and proud or set on making your audience feel something, then red may be the colour for you

Playful and energetic, orange combines the youthfulness of yellow with the boldness of red. If you’re an innovative and creative brand with a spirited side, you could choose orange for your branding.

Attention-grabbing and full of optimism, yellow is unsurprisingly a very happy colour. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an edge to it – think caution signs. If you want your brand to seem full of life, then yellow may be your colour.

2. Green and blue

Health, prosperity and nature are common associations with green. However, we all know the saying ‘green with envy’, so it’s important to consider how you want your brand to be perceived.

Signalling security, calmness, and logic, blue is a popular choice for brands. For many consumers, blue hues evoke feelings of trust; however, they can also be deemed cold and detached.

3. Pink and purple

Imaginative and playful, pink is a fun colour for brands to use in their visual identities. While many people still consider pink to be a very feminine colour, various tones and shades of pink have been used in branding across all industries.

Long associated with wealth and royalty, purple can also evoke feelings of spirituality and imagination. Brands may want to use this colour if they want to communicate luxury to their consumers.

4. White and black

Clean and simplistic, using white in your brand’s visual identity can give it a minimalistic feel. It also works well as a base for other, bolder colours.

Powerful and undeniably sophisticated, black signals authority and modern luxury. However, with the connotations of mourning, black is often limited to non-health industries.

Do you need help refining your brand identity?

Let Refined Marketing help you shine – get in touch with our team to see how we can help at letstalk@refinedmarketing.co.uk

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