What Your Colour Scheme Says About Your Business

Colour is a powerful form of non-verbal communication. Red means stop, green means go, and an orange frog is telling you something you should probably listen to.

It is also one of the first things people notice about a brand, which is why a colour scheme deserves more than a personal preference.

The psychology of colour

Search for colour psychology and you will find a great many infographics stating flatly that blue means stability and green means harmony. The depth of analysis is limited, and the lists tend to leave out two things that matter: cultural differences, and the personal experience every customer brings with them.

The more useful question is whether a colour is appropriate to what is being sold. What colour comes to mind when you think about your product or service, and what colour simply makes sense? That instinct is usually closer to the answer than a chart.

Colour is too dependent on individual experience to translate neatly into one universal feeling, but broader patterns do exist in how colours are read. These are the general perceptions in western markets.

Blue

Blue is popular with large companies, and it signals loyalty, strength, stability and trust. It is no surprise that so many banks use it.

Green

Green is associated with growth, nature, harmony, freshness and safety. It reads as soothing, relaxing and youthful.

Red

No other colour affects us on quite such a primal level. Red is associated with love, speed, anger, danger, action, vibrancy and determination.

Orange

Orange radiates warmth and happiness, combining the energy of red with the cheerfulness of yellow. It reads as sociable, optimistic, cheerful and creative.

Yellow

Yellow is the lightest hue on the spectrum, uplifting and illuminating, and it carries hope, happiness, cheerfulness and fun. It reads as creative, confident and light-hearted.

Purple

Purple is often associated with luxury, power, wisdom, creativity and magic. It sits between the intensity of red and the calm of blue, and that balance is part of why it feels considered.

Pink

Pink is associated with compassion, nurturing and love, along with sweetness and hope. It is often chosen where a brand wants to feel warm and approachable.

Can a business own a colour?

Companies have tried. Cadbury is strongly associated with a particular shade of purple and does hold a UK trademark covering one specific shade, Pantone 2685C, in a limited context. Its attempt to widen that protection across a broader range of products reached the UK Court of Appeal in 2018, which ruled against it.

The practical lesson is a useful one: a colour association can be built over years, but owning a colour outright is very hard to achieve.

The evidence behind colour in branding

The most cited figure in this area comes from a 2006 study by Satyendra Singh in Management Decision, which found that roughly 62 to 90 percent of a consumer's assessment of a product can rest on colour alone. That is a wide range, and a study from 2006 is a prompt rather than a rule, but the direction is consistent: colour is doing work before a customer reads a single word.

Read the colour list above the same way. Those are patterns rather than instructions, and the strongest colour choices are the ones that fit what the business actually does.

Where colour fits in your brand

Colour is one decision inside a larger one. Our brand and creative work covers identity as a whole.

If you are working through a rebrand, or wondering whether your current colours are doing you any favours, get in touch.