Choosing a color scheme for your brand is not a decision to take lightly and is often the first branding decision you have to make. Color makes a huge impact on your connection to your customers and your brand recognition. There is quite a bit of psychology surrounding colors so you have to be strategic in your choices to not only appeal to the right customers by to appropriately convey your business to the world. To help you in your color selection process, read on for your must-have tips whether your next step is to hire a logo maker or begin thinking about all aspects of your marketing collateral.

Establish Your Brand Identity

In order to make the best color decisions for your brand, you need to clearly establish your brand identity. The colors you choose should be an accurate and authentic representation of your business as the colors will serve as communication to consumers. As you are establishing your brand’s identity, choose descriptive words. Some examples are timeless, trendy, or brave. These words will help with the next step: color research.

Research Color Meanings and Associations

Once you have chosen words to describe your brand, it’s time to do some color research. Specifically, you want to look at the meanings and associations of certain colors. You can have colors in mind that you might want and start by researching those. You can also choose to search for colors that closely match the descriptive words you’ve chosen. Collect ideas in this stage. You don’t need to decide on anything yet.

Find Branding Inspiration and Review Competitor Colors

The next research you will want to conduct is to get inspiration for what types of color schemes you like. Save any brand colors that you find compelling or interesting to use as inspiration for your own. You also want to have an idea of what your competition is doing with their color scheme so you can get an idea of what might work and figure out how you can stand out among them. Some colors are associated with certain industries, so you want to be aware of anything that could further benefit your brand recognition.

Select Your Primary and Secondary Colors

You want to have one primary color for your brand and this color will serve as the most recognizable color. This core color is one you want to have most commonly associated with your brand. Facebook, for example, features a blue color.

Once your primary color is chosen, you want to decide on 2–4 secondary colors that will complement your core color. You have creative freedom over how you want these colors to look together. You can choose to do a monochromatic look, which features different shades of the same color. You can choose colors that contrast for dimension or opt for colors of the same tone (warm, cool, etc).

Choose Complimentary Neutral Colors

After your primary and secondary colors are chosen, it’s time to decide on the neutral colors that you will use in your brand. Typically, neutral colors will be used for text or other communication (such as QR codes). Decide which neutral shades will complement your chosen colors and elect to use those. Choosing neutral colors helps create uniformity in your branding so even though the process seems simple, it has a major impact on your overall look.

Test Out Your Choices

With all of your selections in place, you now need to test out the choices you’ve made. It’s always a good idea to put together a few options so you can play around with them. As you are testing the colors, you may decide that something doesn’t work or you might be inspired to try something different. Perhaps a secondary color you chose makes more sense to be your primary color.

During this testing phase, you want to be very thorough in creating potential collateral. This process can feel time-consuming and tedious as you test multiple variations and make final decisions. This is the most important step because you are culminating your research and choosing the final colors that your brand will use, so don’t rush it and be very cognizant of your selections.

Conclusion

Choosing the colors that will become a recognizable symbol of your brand is not a task to take lightly but it can be a lot of fun. Color schemes are the perfect way to breathe your values into your brand to attract the right audience to help your business succeed.