Colour is the first thing people notice about a brand and the easiest thing to get wrong in small ways. A colour that looks right on your laptop may be hard to read on a phone in sunlight, or dull on a printed box. This guide gives a calm sequence for choosing colours that will still work in two years.
A word on what colours mean
You will read that blue means trust and red means energy. Treat such lines with care. Colour meaning is cultural and changes with place, trade and age group. Red is a bridal colour in many Indian weddings and a warning colour on a road sign. White may suggest calm in one setting and mourning in another. Rather than borrow a rule, look at what your own customers see every day, and at what your competitors use, then decide where you want to sit near them and where you want to stand apart.
The steps
- Write three words for how the business should feel, for example warm, careful, modern. Those words guide every choice that follows.
- Collect what already exists: your logo, your board, packaging, anything customers know you by. Keep a colour that people already link with you, unless it is the problem.
- Look at five competitors and note their main colours. If everyone uses the same one, you can choose it and stand out some other way, or choose a different one and accept that it will feel different.
- Pick one main colour that can carry the logo and the main buttons or headings.
- Add one or two supporting colours, then neutrals for text and backgrounds.
- Test them together on a real page, a real board and a real label, not as swatches alone.
Our brand colour palette builder helps you build and compare a set, and the logo in context tool shows how your logo and colours look on a board, a card and a page. A colour palette is the set you finally agree on.
How many colours
| Role | How many | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Main colour | One | Logo, key headings, main buttons, the pack front. |
| Supporting colours | One or two | Highlights, icons, charts, secondary buttons. |
| Dark neutral | One | Body text and dark backgrounds. |
| Light neutral | One or two | Page backgrounds, panels, spaces. |
| Alert colours | Only if needed | Errors and success messages on a website or app. |
Fewer is stronger. A palette with eight equal colours has no voice. If the main colour covers the page less than you expect, that is fine: restraint is what makes it noticeable.
Contrast and readability
A colour that looks lovely as a large block can be unreadable as small text on a coloured background. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines describe minimum contrast ratios between text and its background so that more people can read the page, including people with low vision and people on a phone outdoors. Check every text and background pair you plan to use with our colour contrast checker. If your main colour fails as text, use it for large shapes and use the dark neutral for the words.
Print versus screen
A screen makes colour with light and paper makes it with ink, so the same colour can look different. Some bright, glowing screen colours cannot be matched exactly in print. Choose your colours with both in mind, ask the printer for a proof and look at it in daylight. Our note on how to prepare artwork for print explains colour modes and proofs. Record each colour in the formats you will need: screen values and print values.
Write down where each is used
The step most businesses skip is the one that keeps the brand consistent: a short rule for each colour. Main colour on the logo and primary buttons. Supporting colour only for highlights. Dark neutral for text. Put that and the exact values in your brand guidelines, and see what is in brand guidelines for the rest of that document. Then a new designer, a printer or a staff member can follow it without calling you.
When you do not need a studio
If you are starting out with a simple logo and a home-made look, choosing one main colour and two neutrals yourself is a sound start. Bring in a studio when you are building a full identity, entering a crowded market, or need colours that work across packaging, signage and a website from day one.
