Choosing brand colors was without a doubt the hardest part of creating my brand. I thought it would be easy. Pick two primary colors and done. I was wrong. Do you know how many shades of red there are? More than you can count. I’ve compiled some tools that will hopefully help you cut the number of hours you spend staring at slightly different shades of one color, but first let’s look at how to pick colors.
Choose Your Primary Color
The first color you need to pick is your main color. The exact shade that will be the primary message for your brand. Colors are connected with emotions so you need to pick a message that complements your branding pillars. A lot of research went into learning what colors mean to the human brain, and I’m mainly drawing from Website Builder Expert for these findings. Here is a quick list of the main colors and their general message.
- Red—excited and zealous
- Orange—friendly and fun
- Yellow—optimistic and happy
- Green—fresh and nature
- Blue—dependable and reassuring
- Purple—distinguished and quality
- Brown—reliable and assessable
- Black—luxurious and elegance
- White—sleek and user-friendly
You’ll need to select a color that matches your brand values, and then pick a general shade of the color. You don’t have to get too picky since it may change as you add the other colors to your palette.
Choose Your Complementary Colors
You’ll need to pick one or two complementary colors to your primary color. The goal of these colors is to make your primary color pop. The best way to do this is to look at a color wheel and pick an opposite to your primary color. See the image below, and follow the lines from your primary color to the best complementary color choices.
Once you have one or two complementary colors selected, you can play with the shades of each color to find a combination that matches well. If you don’t feel you have a good eye for colors (or, like me, the number of colors is overwhelming), you can use some online tools to generate color combination choices. Below is a list of some of my favorites.
- Canva Color Wheel—complementary color finder
- Coolors—upload an image to auto-generate color palettes from the picture
- Colormind—color palette generator with ability to lock colors and generate others to match
- Colorffy—gradient generator, color palette generator, contrast checker, and colorblindness checker
Choose Your Background Color
You will need to pick a color for the background, and you have two choices.
- Muted version of your primary color—usually with a white or gray layover box behind the text to make it more readable
- Off-white—classic and not distracting for readers
If you have a bold primary color, I’d suggest an off-white background to not overwhelm the reader. It’s not recommended to use straight white because it’s abrasive on the eyes when reading on a screen.
Choose Your Typeface Color
You really only have one choice for this color: gray. Again, it’s not recommended to use straight black because it will cause eye strain on a white background. Using a dark gray is the most preferred color for typeface.
Final Thoughts
It’s important to take breaks when picking a color palette. I walked away and came back to my palette several times and realized something was off with the colors. In the end, I’d suggest not to be overly picky. I chose the general shades of my colors and then put them into a color generator. The computer suggested the best shades of each, and I made the final decision. It’s not as good as hiring a branding team, but, for someone on a budget who wants to be as professional as possible, it works. Most important of all, my audience has noticed the difference and responded well to it.
Thanks for reading!
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