Ultimate Guide To Branding Colors: Color Symbolism, Color Wheel, Color Palette

Color is an important element for an entrepreneur.

You need to choose the right colors to represent your brand. These colors will then be used to design your branding and marketing collateral as well as your website.

Today, we’ll explore some color concepts such as color symbolism, color wheel and color palette and how they can be used to select your brand colors.

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Color Symbolism: Each Color Has Its Own Meaning

Have you ever wondered why there’s always red and yellow on fast food logos?

It’s not a coincidence. It’s intentional.

Fast food chains, from McDonald’s to Taco Bell, utilize colors to influence consumers psychologically. Yellow elicits a feeling of comfort while red makes people feel hungry and impulsive.

From this example, it’s clear that colors can be a powerful tool. Here are the common meanings of the various colors.

• Red: energy, passion, danger
• Orange: creativity, youth, enthusiasm
• Yellow: happiness, hope, spontaneity
• Green: nature, growth, harmony—but also wealth & stability
• Blue: calm, trust, intelligence
• Purple: luxury, mystery, spirituality
• Pink: femininity, playfulness, romance
• Brown: wholesomeness, warmth, honesty
• Black: elegance, power, sophistication
• White: minimalism & simplicity
• Gray: professionalism, formality, conventionality
• Gold, Silver, Bronze & Metallics: wealth, prosperity, success
• Multicolor: fun, diversity, optimism

With each color symbolizing different things and evoking different feelings, it’s recommended that you spend time carefully selecting the colors for your brand.

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels

Color Wheel: Discover The Relationships Between Colors

The color wheel is a chart representing the relationships between colors.

If you ever wondered what colors look good together or which colors go well together, the color wheel is your answer!

Color wheel is based on color theory, a practical combination of art and science that’s used to determine what colors look good together. Invented in 1666, Isaac Newton invented the color wheel by mapping the color spectrum onto a circle.

After you’ve selected your brand colors, you can use the color wheel to identify harmonious color combinations.

• Complementary: 2 opposite colors on the color wheel
• Monochromatic: 3 different values of the same color
• Analogous: 3 adjacent colors on the color wheel
• Split Complements: 1 color & 2 adjacent tertiary colors of its complement
• Triadic: 3 evenly spaced colors on the color wheel
• Tetradic: 2 complementary pairs

Match and play to see what color combination works for your brand~

Source: Sessions College

Color Palette: Get Inspired By User-Created Color Combinations

A color palette is a collection of color schemes. Designers refer to this when designing a logo, website, social media graphics etc.

If you’re unsure, you can also take a look at user-created color combinations. Explore over a million color palettes or browse the most loved, most comments and most favorites. This wealth of color combinations is like an inspiration bank waiting for you to tap into.

When you find a color palette you like, ensure that you have a main brand color while the others can be supporting colors.

Photo by martynaszulist on Pixabay

Color Palette Generator: Create Palette Based On Predominant Colors In Your Logo Or Image

If you have an image or logo, you can choose to upload it to this website which will then extract a color palette for you.

This is suitable for those who don’t have any brand colors in mind but already have a logo or image that they’ll use on their website or collateral.

You can use the above tool to find suitable brand colors.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels

How Many Brand Colors Do You Need?

Finally, we reach the burning question that everyone has… How many brand colors do you need?

Take note that we definitely need more than one color. Having a single color is very limited. And everything will most probably be in that color (your readers will also become accustomed to this and the color may become “invisible”). Your main brand color should be the one that stands out and is thus used for call-to-action (CTA) buttons while the supporting colors can help complement your brand color scheme.

According to this blog article from Elegant Themes, it’s recommended to have 5 colors for your website.

• 2 background colors that complement each other
• 1 font color: dark font color for light-colored background & vice versa
• 1 hyperlink & CTA color: must stand out from others!
• 1 final touches color: out-of-the-box color but not as important as hyperlink/CTA color

For me, I have 5 colors: red, pink, white, black and gold colors for my website. I don’t really count gold (it’s a sparkling highlight, a feature of the Divi child theme from Divi Lover), black and white so it’s more like I selected 2 colors? When I was hiring a logo designer, I only knew I wanted red since it’s related to romance and love (not because my favorite color is red XD). But I didn’t have a specific shade or hue so I left it to the designer. After I received the logo, I simply uploaded it to the palette generator. From there, I chose the red and pink colors to be used on my website (as well as the basic white and black and sparkling highlight colors). But that’s because I like to keep my design minimalist. You can, of course, use more colors. Read more about my author branding journey~

Source: By Donjete Vuniqi via Elegant Themes

Now It’s Your Turn

How do you select your brand colors? Did you use any software or tool?

Do share your tips about selecting branding colors~

You can hire a logo designer from Fiverr or Fiverr Pro. Or you can create a professional logo in a few clicks with Fiverr Logo Maker. Another alternative is to download logo templates from Creative Market.