How to Choose Colors: The Guide to Color Psychology
by Gertrude Pillena
My journey with colors started as a child. Growing up in a tightly-knit village in a small town, I have always enjoyed visiting my Aunt Susan who lived next door. She had a beautiful garden on her front yard, no walls were left untouched by paintings of all sizes or wide-rimmed hats, and colorful rugs were strategically placed around her house.
Even then, I always knew I’d surround my life with art, and that I would make a living as a designer one day. Now, as a brand and web designer, part of my job is putting together a color palette, and I enjoy every second of it.
Clients usually come up to me saying they need a brand refresh. Often times, they already have colors picked out, but they’re lost in the process of creating a palette that works for their brand. Like a good florist or interior designer magically transforming visual experiences from ‘blah’ to ‘wow,’ every style and color seems to be coherent and cohesive — don’t we all want that? How come it isn’t easy to achieve?
Have you been tweaking your brand colors for some time now but it just don’t seem to ‘work’? I think a good eye for design doesn’t come only for designers; anyone, including you, can be trained in visual arts. But how? It’s really simple!
Step one: write down key brand attributes to identify colors that support your brand.
Example from Survey
Are you creative and fun or serious and formal?
Use Google Forms or Typeform to survey your audience on how they describe you. Use Tagcrowd to process the data as shown here.
Learn more about personal branding inside Presence, our online course teaching personal branding.
You have to identify what makes your business unique, and what message you want to share to the world. To share some examples, here are a few adjectives that relate to colors purple and blue based on the universal rule on color psychology:
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Deep purple exudes truthfulness, being purposeful and visionary, including some spiritual or mystical qualities.
Softer purple could be perceived as serene and relaxing, although it could also mean being flaky, aloof, or down-market.
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Deep blue could mean having the qualities of being calm, reflective, cool, trustworthy, serene, forward thinking, and focused.
Softer blue could mean being cold, unemotional, unfriendly, or conservative.
…and the list goes on. You probably have a basic knowledge on this already as anyone can search this online. I challenge you now to do this first step and delve deeper into your brand’s core values and attributes. Then pick out three to four colors that best represent your brand and will resonate with your audience.
Now, let me ask you a question. Have you noticed how subjective colors can be? Studies show that people perceive colors differently based on age, gender, culture, social status, or even life experiences.
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Red means good luck and vitality in Chinese culture, but it in the Philippines, when its flag is flown upwards and the red field is placed above the blue field, it means the country is at war. 🇵🇭 No wonder most people are still confused in putting together a color palette despite having a good grasp of color psychology!
To keep an objective approach during this creative process, this is where the magic begins.
Step two: select which season best represents your business.
You want to use the tones and hues within that season to bring your message across clearly and coherently.
How come seasons become relevant in this process? Growing up, I would always train my eye, albeit unwittingly, in discerning how colors work through gallery, garden, and showroom visits, including attending fashion shows. Despite this, I was never exposed to a more sophisticated way in making use of the science and mathematics behind color psychology — till’ one of my design mentors introduced Fiona Humberstone, the founder of The Brand Stylist.
Since then, I got sucked into a rabbit hole and learned about Angela Wright and the Wright Theory. Angela Wright started her research in the late ‘70s, which included studying Jung and Freudian psychology and the dynamics of color. In 1984, she wrote her theory, and opened a color consultancy a year later to test it empirically.
In the early ‘90s, it was discovered that there are objective links between colors and human behavior through mathematical relationships within four different color groups. Angela Wright was able to develop the Color Affects System which tells us that there are four color families based on different human personalities. Within each family, every color naturally harmonizes with every other color, and colors from different families do not harmonize.
Fiona Humberstone went further in this study, and called these four colors groups based on what we know as the four seasons. Today, it’s commonly referred to as seasonal color personalities and major brands like Shell, Motorola, or The Body Shop have confirmed its effectiveness through increase in sales.
Notice why snow capped mountains look more beautiful in winter than in summer? Or why colors from the fall foliage in Central Park just seem to work? I never thought there could be a universal color harmony, and that colors from a certain group attract each other without even trying.
So, onto the four seasonal color groups or personalities:
Spring Tones
Spring has light, clear, and bright colors, and it does not contain black. It has a fun, youthful, friendly, and expressive personality, but it can be perceived as cheap, frivolous, and insubstantial.
Typical spring businesses include creative and communications-based industries, e.g. Google, Twitter, and Nintendo.
Summer Tones
Summer has cool, delicate, and muted tones; it contains a little bit of grey. It exudes a chic, organized, logical, and empathetic vibe, but it can also be perceived as unfriendly, elitist, or aloof.
Typical summer businesses include creative professionals, luxury hotels, wedding planners, classical musicians, and also well established and serious businesses like lawyers and accountants.
Autumn Tones
Autumn has warm, intense, and muted colors, with a hint of black, although black itself doesn’t belong in this group. It has an ambitious, focused, strong, and authentic personality, but sometimes it can be seen as bossy and tedious, or boring and old-fashioned if misused.
Typical autumn businesses include organic or fair trade businesses, businesses that exudes strength and integrity like Mastercard, or those with a proud heritage like McDonalds and Cadbury.
Winter Tones
Winter has strong, clear, contrasting, and bright colors. Think ice sparkling metallics and neon tones. This is the only personality that includes pure black and white. It has a decisive, opulent, cutting-edge, and self-assured personality, but can also appear to be cold, uncaring, and expensive.
High-end jewelry and fashion, luxury travel and cars, and businesses within the banking, technology, and finance industries are among the typical winter businesses list. Remember that metallics and neon tones belong to this personality, and so, on the flip side, no-frills businesses that are usually cheap can be a winter business as well. Like what people say, it’s all about brand positioning.
Step three: create a mood board to finalize your color palette.
Example from client Work
For douxds, the goal is to reflect an American high-end culture without being intimidating. These colors are the culmination of my study and research on luxury brands that stay powerful using user-generated content. I looked for colors that blur the line between “the ruler” and “the jester” or “the everyman.”
Here’s a brief description about the color selection I created:
Orange — Evokes energy and vibrancy, while also maintaining a friendly appeal. Non-obtrusive and inviting. Fun + playful. Great to use to show high-energy, while not overpowering.
Blue — Represents dependability, loyalty, and calmness. Great to use for financial institutions, social networks, corporate industries and soothing spas.
Green — Represents freshness, balance or eco-friendly brands. Green also alludes wealth and growth. It is the color that represents “go”, and naturally alludes to positivity!
This may sound daunting, but really, it’s likely that you’ve probably done this already! On the one hand, Pinterest helps you pin images that can eventually be collated into mood boards. Some people, on the other hand, are tactile and would prefer printing out images they’ve found on the Internet, or cutting out and arranging clippings from magazines or newspapers. The method doesn’t really matter, what’s important is that you get a bird’s eye view on the look and feel of your brand. It puts you in charge.
Imagine giving a bouquet of flowers as a gift for a friend, and while searching for the perfect bundle, you’re asked by a shop to describe your friend — what’s her style, and what she wants to feel upon receiving the same.
Creating a mood board is akin to this process of asking someone the right questions in getting to know the person more. Knowing your brand and what you want your target audience to feel when they encounter your brand is the perfect starting point in knowing which colors to choose for your palette.
Summary
Step one: know the key attributes of your brand and what you want to communicate to the world.
Are you a musician who has founded a community-centric digital platform and wants to attract more artists within the high-end market? Be sure to factor in what will speak to your audience — not just your favorite colors.Step two: use the seasons above as guides to choose tones or vibrancy.
You’ve picked out black, white, red, and blue as your brand colors, but what shade or hue? That’s when the Color Affects System or the seasonal personality comes handy. You’re probably looking for autumn hues. Pop them on a neutral backdrop and reflect on it until you find what you’re looking for. Work through each shade or hue until you find the perfect blend that looks and feels right; that you’ll be happy with. And there’s your finished palette! Name the colors, if you want to, or find the pantone or hex codes, if necessary, and you’re ready to launch.Step three: pull out images that resonate with you and create a brief/mood board.
This will help you avoid the ‘stabbing in the dark’, hope-it’ll-work approach, and will pave your way towards ensuring a cohesive color palette and clear brand vision.
Once you get to know your brand more through colors, you can communicate more powerfully, produce more consistent communications across your marketing channels, and create not just an instinctive, but emotional response that will generate sales to your business.
About the Author
Gertrude Pillena is a multi-passionate digital designer and founder of Design Kick. She learned piano and painting when she was seven, violin and ballet when she was twelve, and accidentally learned she can write when she won first place in a journalism competition in high school. In college, she also ventured into a little bit of acting when she starred as a singing nurse for a university film project.
After going to business and law school, she went back to her roots — she started her own creative practice and has been helping professionals and brands through digital design. When not reading or designing, you’ll find her deep in a rabbit hole knowing more about AI and digital rights, mid-century modern architecture and furniture, and anything related to productivity, beauty, travel, sustainability, and culture.
