If you are blessed with good vision, you would know how important seeing colors are in our day-to-day lives. From the most basic needs of mankind (food, water, warmth, and rest), to its self-fulfillment needs, colors are part of every decision-making process.
Would you eat bread that’s turning green? What would be your future sports car’s color?
Truth is, colors are important for a business to survive and flourish. The biggest companies in the world earned their success by choosing the right colors, among many other things.
However. color psychology is an aspect of marketing that sadly can be overlooked by brands, especially those who are just starting out. Sometimes, it’s too late for companies to find out that the reason why their brand is failing is simply because of choosing the wrong color.
So, if you are planning to revamp your brand or is starting a new one, this blog will help you understand how color psychology works and how you can leverage it to successfully market your brand.
What is Color Psychology?
Simply put, color psychology relates to how a certain color affects people’s emotions and behavior. Color psychology explains why a certain hue would make a group of people feel the same way. It also discusses how the same color can have a different effect on different people.
Our culture, upbringing, and human behavior are the main reasons why a specific color can have a universal effect. For example, we often relate the color green to nature, pink is the favorite color for girls and blue for boys. Even if babies are still in the womb, parents would paint their rooms according to their gender and they are set to grow up seeing that color from the time they are born.
Elderlies told us that seeing black cats would cause bad luck, and seeing a purple dog means the owner had a bit of fun in the pet grooming salon.
Individual experiences will also greatly affect how we feel about some colors. There’s this one color which we look our best in, right? You might have gotten your dream job wearing blue on the interview. On the other hand, the scariest moment of your life was maybe being bit by an orange snake.
All this being said, color psychology is the study of how colors relate to us.
How Important Color Psychology is in Marketing?
The goal of marketing is to turn leads into sales. And in the process of acquiring leads, you need to know that your target market’s emotions play a major factor in their decision making.
So, if color psychology helps us understand how a certain color would make a person feel, then leveraging it and choosing the right color sentiment will help you make your target market evoke the feelings you want them to feel towards your brand.
Even more so, colors are of the greatest significance, especially in this era. In digital marketing, we often use our digital devices for everything, and brands have made use of the internet to advertise.
Just think about setting up a website for your brand. Would you design it in just black and white? If so, then good luck! Remember, we want to send a message to our leads, and simply highlighting the ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Sign Up Now’ buttons in green rather than blending them with the rest of the page will greatly affect your sales.
Moreover, aside from helping you send the right message in marketing, color psychology will also help you to not send the wrong one. For instance, you will not choose a yellow or brown color for your brand if you are selling purified drinking water, and you’ll stay away from the color red if you are in the funeral homes industry.
What Colors Should I Use For My Brand?
Depending on what products and services you offer, there are colors that would suit you better than the rest. In this part, we’ll briefly discuss the psychological meaning of the most used colors. There are three points that will help you in deciding:
-A color should be appropriate for your brand
-It should be appealing
-It should still differentiate your brand
Red
The color red is associated with strong emotions and is the one the attracts the most attention than the rest of the colors. It often equates with emotions such as love, anger, passion, as well as strength, courage, power, and excitement.
If your brand speaks of these traits, then the color red is for you. If paired with a good logo design, this color will make a statement. This is why brands like YouTube, Red Bull, Toyota, and Coca-Cola work well with red.
Blue
Although they do not sit opposite the color wheel, the color meaning of blue is quite the opposite of red. Blue is a very calming color, it reduces fear and tension. This color symbolizes trust, serenity, and peace as well.
Oftentimes, we see the color blue on banks ( or any establishment where we put our money). We also see blue on personal care items and hospitals. We also see a lot of blue on our social media apps, since blue strongly promotes interaction.
We can say that blue is one of the safest colors to choose if you are starting up a brand.
Green
As mentioned, the color green is associated with nature. Other than that, it can also mean generosity, clarity, and stability. The most famous brands with the green color are Animal Planet, Starbucks, and Whole Foods.
Yellow
The color yellow symbolizes intelligence, warmth, cheerfulness, and optimism. It is one of the few colors that always needs a secondary background or bordering color since it is too light to stand on its own. Just look at Shell, DHL, and Burger King and you’ll see.
Useful Tools To Help You Achieve The Right Color Sentiment For Your Brand
With the rise of digital marketing, there exist quite a few tools that will help you mix and match colors that will work perfectly for your brand. Remember that you need not only one color, but a variety of gradients to do so.
Coolors
Coolors will help you get the perfect swatch and color scheme for your brand. You can easily generate your own or explore the websites for thousands of trending palettes.
CSS Gradient
This tool is one that you can use for free and lets you create a gradient background that you can export and use for websites.
Color Mind
Color Mind is an AI generate color scheme generator that uses deep learning.
Pantone
Pantone, a trusted source for designers everywhere. This will soon be a paid tool but it gives you complete reference for color swatching at multiple saturation, hue, and luminosity
