The Language of Color: How Colors Influence Emotions and Behavior
Color is more than just a visual experience; it can shape your mood, desires, and reactions. When it comes to communication, color is unmatched as a tool. Consciously or not, colors can evoke emotions, inspire actions, and shift thinking. They can stimulate or soothe, raise or lower blood pressure, and even increase appetite. In this blog, we’ll explore the psychological effects of various colors.
What Brand Colors Can Reveal About Your Business
Blue seems to be the winning color, as it shows up in 33% of the top 100 brands. Red comes second by showing up in 29% of the brands, and black or greyscale make the third most popular choice with 28%. Finally, 13% use yellow or gold.
What’s interesting is that 95% of the top 100 brands only use one or two colors. This can be explained as an attempt to maintain consistency by staying simple in their branding.
Moreover, text is not important to many of these brands, as only 41% involved it in their logos. This serves as proof that a strong logo can make a connection with the audience, even with no use of text to supplement it. In fact, 9% of the brands didn’t even feature their company’s name on their logo, going one step further with the simplicity of their logos.
Red: aggressive, energetic, provocative, attention-grabbing, passionate
Red evokes a passionate and visceral response. It is a color that increases your heart rate, makes your breath faster, and is generally associated with energy, excitement, and passion. It’s one of the colors that is attention-grabbing, provocative, and excitable, and used by powerhouse brands like Coca Cola, Kellogg’s, and Target. Other attributes include:
- Associated with energy, strength, power, passion, desire, and love
- Enhances human metabolism, increases respiration rate, and raises blood pressure
- Attracts attention more than any other color, at times signifying danger
Purple: royalty, sophistication, nostalgia, mystery, spirituality
Purple is a sophisticated yet mysterious color. It tends to be used with higher-end products due to its association with royalty and elegance. Purple’s mysterious element is also linked with spirituality, and it can bring a magical element to your branding. Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red, making it a great choice for brand like Hallmark, Welch’s, and Taco Bell. Other attributes include:
- It’s association with royalty symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition.
- Conveys wealth and extravagance.
- Associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, and creativity.
Blue: trustworthy, dependable, secure, responsible, confident
Blue is the most popular color choice for the top brands. It is thought to put people at ease, as it reminds them of the sky and the ocean. Blue is also associated with trust, security, and confidence which make a great combination for brands such as Facebook, Oral B, and Walmart. Other attributes include:
- Unique and authentic
- Enthusiastic, sympathetic, and personal
- Warm, communicative, and compassionate
- Idealistic, spiritual, and sincere
- Peaceful, flexible, and imaginative
Green: nature, freshness, wealth, serenity, safety
Green is a color that is synonymous with calmness, safety, and freshness. Green tends to be associated with health along with the feelings of peace and serenity. Considered a key color that represents nature, vitality, growth, and freshness, green has been used with brands such as Starbucks, Animal Planet, and John Deere. Other attributes include:
- Color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility
- Considered beneficial to the mind and body
- Slows human metabolism and produces a calming effect
- Strongly associated with tranquility and calmness
- Used to symbolize piety and sincerity
Yellow: positivity, light, warmth, creativity, happiness
Yellow has been scientifically proven by studies to enhance mental activity , heighten awareness and energy levels, and is associated with hope and optimism. Yellow also stands out among other colors, which makes a yellow brand identity creative and appealing, and evokes a feeling of positivity for brands such as McDonalds, Subway, and Best Buy. Other attributes include:
- Associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy.
- Produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy.
- Bright, pure yellow is an attention-getter, which is the reason taxicabs are painted this color.
Orange: vitality, fun, playful, exuberant, outgoing
Orange makes an ideal color choice for brands that want to blend the optimism and the brightness of yellow and the passion and the energy of red. This color also enhances extraversion, allowing people to let go of their inhibitions and express themselves more freely. It is a creative and cheerful color that evokes a friendly and adventurous feeling for brands like Nickelodeon, Amazon, and Harley Davidson. Other attributes include:
- Associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics
- Represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation
Brown: earth-like, natural, reliable, durable, comforting
Brown is common in nature and it has meanings such as natural, wholesome, protective, which is why it would be a good color for products or services that are related to food, natural products, environment etc. Being associated with comfort, reliability, trust, and loyalty, brown represents brands such as UPS, M&Ms, and Hershey’s. Other attributes include:
- Associated with the traits of dependability, reliability, and resilience.
- Brown-lovers are most often reserved and not looking to attract attention to oneself
- While light brown represents honesty and stability, dark brown is considered mature and predictable.
Black: Prestige, elegance, timelessness, sophistication, power
Black is another popular color option for brands and it tends to be one of the most classic options. It’s both classic and sophisticated and it can make a brand identity stand out. It seems to work perfectly with luxury products, blending the classic and powerful elements. Black is one of the colors that can be combined with others to add a stronger emotion, without losing the classical appeal, for brands like Apple, Gucci, and Nike. Other attributes include:
- Associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery
- A mysterious color associated with fear and the unknown (black holes)
- Can have a negative connotation (blacklist, black humor, ‘black death’)
White: pure, noble, clean, soft, goodness
White represents simplicity, purity, and cleanliness. These three make it extremely popular in the healthcare sector, in the cleaning business, but also in the child-related businesses. White can also bring out a feeling of trust by tapping into purity and simplicity. It makes us think of new beginnings, perfection, but also of elegance and serenity. Like black, white is one of the colors that can be combined with others to add a stronger emotion, without losing the classical appeal, for brands like Apple, Gucci, and Nike. Other attributes include:
- Associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity
- Signifies safety, purity, and cleanliness
- Invites creativity, reflection, openness, and awakenings