How to Choose Brand Colors in 5 Easy Steps

What’s one color you love? My favorite color is pink, (light pink specifically – not hot pink, not mauve). Friends and family will often buy me pink gifts just because they saw it and thought of me! Color is powerful that way – it evokes emotion, becomes part of our memories, and helps us communicate. When it comes to your business, research has shown that “color makes up about 80% of brand recognition” (source: TechReport). So, if you don’t have consistent brand colors, now is the time to pick some! If that sounds hard, don’t worry – I’m about to show you how to choose brand colors in 5 easy steps. 

Step 1: Know These 3 Brand Design Truths

Before you can choose your colors, I want to share a few brand color fundamentals that will help you create a palette that works. Color theory can get much more complex than this. But for the sake of time, these are the 3 most important things that I want you to know about color and design:

• Color has meaning
• A good color palette is useful, not just pretty
• Stick to 4-6 colors 

Let’s dive into each of these points a bit more.

Color has meaning

We associate colors with meanings – the study of this is called color psychology. Culture and context plays a role here. For example, in the United States blue is often associated with trust. That’s why banks like American Express or Chase use it! But the version of the color matters, too. Soft blues are calming and often used by wellness brands.

Check out this article from HubSpot for a list of color meanings and examples of how brands use them.

As you create your color palette, think about the message that you want to send to your audience and choose colors that will support it! 

(P.S. – if you want more help understanding your brand aesthetic and the message that it sends your audience, check out my Website Style Quiz! It will match you with my website templates based on your personality, which is helpful for understanding your overall branding as well!)

A good color palette is useful, not just pretty

While it might be tempting to pick every color you like and call it a day, it’s so important to make sure that your palette is both appealing AND useful. This tip is something that I had to learn as a new designer (and I’m always learning more!). 

What do I mean by useful? You want anything that you design using your colors to be easy to view and/or read. Though you may like soft colors, If you put cream text on a white background it will be hard to read. Similarly, putting hot pink text on a bold teal background won’t be easy to read, either!

Create contrast using a mix of light, mid-tone, and dark colors in your palette. At the very least, have one dark color to use for text.

Stick to 4-6 colors for your palette

This next tip may sound like I’m taking all of the fun out of this, but stick to 4-6 colors for your palette. This is not to be restrictive, but to make it easier for you to stay consistent in using cohesive colors. Consistency is key with branding! It will help your audience to start associating you with your brand colors.

Here’s an example of a color palette I created with just 4 colors: a light color, a dark color, an main bold color for attention, and a mid-tone accent color. It can really be that simple! I used this palette for my Vanilla Bean Showit website template, and people often comment that they love the colors.

Step 2: Gather Color Inspiration

Now that you’ve gotten a crash course in brand color strategy, let’s get to the fun part! It’s time to gather inspiration for your palette. My favorite place to look for color palettes is Pintersest. I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to Brand Color Palettes. Coolors is another great resource that has both a library of ideas and a color palette generator.

Start a new Pinterest board and save some ideas! You can search for actual color palettes, as well as images that have colors in them you like. It’s okay to pin whatever your eye is drawn to – we’ll narrow down in the next step.

I also like finding free stock photos with colors close to what I’m going for – photos usually have a complete color palette already in them, so you can really see how all the colors work together! Unsplash and Pexels are my favorite resources for downloading free images.

(So you don’t spend too much time on this step, I recommend setting a timer for 30 minutes and just seeing what you find. Then, move on to step #3!)

Step 3: Look for trends in your inspiration

This next step is easy and quick, but it will help you be more decisive when picking your final colors. Take a look at your Pinterest inspiration board and make note of any trends you see. Did you pin a lot of palettes with teal and blue? Are you drawn to soft neutrals? Or, maybe you chose a lot of bold palettes that use red? Ask yourself why you like the inspiration you found and how you can incorporate those qualities into your unique brand palette.

Step 4: Build your color palette!

It’s finally time – l build your brand color palette! Hopefully by this point you have a pretty clear idea of what colors you want to use thanks to all of the research you did beforehand!

I build color palettes for clients in Adobe Illustrator, but for the purposes of this tutorial I’m going to recommend Canva. It’s free and very easy to use. Canva even has a handy “Photo Colors” feature that you can use to match your colors to the ones in an image you’ve uploaded. If you did download any free stock photos in Step 2, now’s a great time to use them!

Use your inspiration as a starting point, then tweak your color palette until you get something that feels right for your brand. Keep in mind what you’ve learned so far about color meanings and wanting to have a good mix of light, mid-tone, and dark colors. We don’t want to completely copy and paste someone else’s work! Even if you really love a palette you’ve found, think about what you can change to make it your own.

Step 5: Use your new brand colors!

Yay, you officially have brand colors! I hope you’re feeling excited. In Canva, use the color button to locate the hex codes for your colors (a hex code is a six-digit string of letters and numbers formatted like #000000). Save your brand color hex codes in a safe place so that you can always use them when designing for your business!

Now, it’s time to start designing using your business’ new brand colors. Start with something simple like creating an Instagram story graphic in Canva. The first time you design using your colors, you might find that you need to make adjustments so that they work together better. Know that this is normal! Just tweak the colors as needed, then update your official brand color palette. 

Want more DIY Design Resources?

I hope you’ve had fun learning how to choose brand colors! You now know how to think about color strategically from a marketing perspective, find inspiration, and build a color palette that works! 

Since you’re DIY-ing your branding, would you like to DIY a website, too? If so, check out the free Website Style Quiz I mentioned earlier! It will match you with my easy to use Showit website templates based on your preferences. Then, you can get on your way to launching a beautiful, strategic new website. Since these templates are completely customizable, you can swap the template palette with your new brand colors, too!