Choosing brand colours feels like the fun part of branding, and it is. It’s also where a lot of small businesses create problems they’ll live with for years: a yellow that can’t be read on white, a blue that looks purple when it’s printed, or six “official” colours that nobody uses the same way twice.
The aim isn’t to find colours you like. It’s to find a small set of colours that do a job, and that look like the same business wherever they turn up.
Start with where the colours will be used
Before you look at a single swatch, list where your brand colours have to work. For most businesses that includes a website, social media profiles, documents and quotes, and some mix of signage, vehicles, uniforms and print.
Each of those behaves differently. A screen makes colour with light, so bright, saturated shades look vivid. Print makes colour with ink, so the same shade can come out flatter and duller. Embroidery thread, vinyl and paint each have their own limited ranges. A colour that only looks right on a phone isn’t a brand colour, it’s a website colour.
How many brand colours you need
Fewer than you think. A workable palette for a small business is usually:
- One main colour that people will associate with you.
- One or two supporting colours for variety and for separating sections.
- One accent reserved for the things you want noticed, such as buttons and offers.
- Neutrals: a dark shade for text and a light one for backgrounds. Pure black and pure white are fine, but slightly softened versions often look more considered.
The accent only works if it’s rare. If your button colour also appears in headings, icons and borders, the button stops standing out.
Look at your competitors, then decide
Put the logos of your five nearest competitors side by side. In plenty of sectors you’ll find they’ve all landed on the same colour. That gives you a choice: fit in, so people recognise what kind of business you are, or deliberately pick something different so you’re the one they remember.
Neither is wrong. What matters is that it’s a decision and not an accident. Be cautious with claims that a particular colour makes people feel a particular way. Associations vary with context and culture, and a well-used colour will beat a “correct” one that’s applied badly.
Test for contrast before you commit
This is the step that gets skipped. Colours have to be readable, and that comes down to contrast between text and its background.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5 to 1 for normal sized text and 3 to 1 for large text at level AA. Free contrast checkers will tell you in seconds whether a pairing passes. Test every combination you plan to use: your main colour with white text on it, your accent as a button, your dark neutral on your light one.
Light yellows, pale greens and mid greys commonly fail with white text. That doesn’t rule them out, it just tells you they need dark text on top, and it’s far better to know that now than after the signage is made.
If a colour can’t carry readable text, it can still be a brand colour. It just can’t be your button.
Check them in print and on real things
Ask your designer for the print version of each colour and, if you can, look at a printed proof or a physical swatch book in daylight. Some bright screen colours have no close match in standard four colour printing. Vivid oranges, greens and electric blues are the usual casualties.
If one of your brand colours shifts badly in print, you have three options: adjust the colour slightly so both versions sit closer together, pay for a special ink where it matters most, or accept the difference. All three are reasonable. Finding out from a box of five hundred brochures is not.
Write the colour codes down
A colour isn’t chosen until it’s recorded. For each one, keep:
- HEX and RGB values for screens.
- CMYK values for standard print.
- A Pantone reference if you’ll use special inks, or need suppliers to match a physical standard.
- A note on use: which is the main colour, which is the accent, and which pairings are allowed for text.
Put that on one page and send it to every supplier, every time. Most colour drift happens because someone picked the shade off a screenshot.
Getting it right first time
Colour is one part of a wider system of logo, type and imagery, and it works best when those are chosen together. That’s what our brand identity work covers, and if your palette already exists but has drifted, ongoing brand management is how we pull it back into line.
