If you’ve been around me for even a short matter of time, you’ve heard me mention that color is a powerful tool in creating your brand visuals. What colors you choose have a bearing on how your customers perceive your business. This psychological response to color is aptly called Color Psychology.

The question is how does it work?

Well, it works for a few reasons. Most of them are anecdotal.

One is personal association. Humans are hard-wired to subconsciously remember colors and associate them with positive or negative experiences. Historically this was used as a way to survive. For example, eating a certain color of berry or digging up a plant with a certain colored flower or root might be the difference between eating food or getting very sick. We still do this in modern times, if you had a favorite item growing up that was a certain color, you’ll associate that specific color with the positive feelings you had from your childhood item. In contrast, if you had a negative experience with something of a certain color then your feelings about that color will be more negative.

Collectively, we associate colors based on our culture as well. Each culture creates associations between colors and certain items or emotions.  For example, in Western societies red is an aggressive color and can symbolize war, but in Eastern societies, red is the color of luck and passion and frequently is used in weddings. These associations affect what color we use for our businesses. In the US the most popular colors for logos are black, blue, and green. Why? Because in the US we associate those colors with positive trains such as calmness, trust, stability, and success. However, in some eastern cultures, black, blue, and green are associated with negative traits such as childishness, death, anxiousness, and infidelity.

Lastly, it has been noted that colors affect performance. There’s a study out that concluded that sports teams or athletes in red uniforms or safety gear outperformed their counterparts who wore blue. There’s a great article on Live Science* that is linked below that shares more about this phenomenon.

Whether it’s science or not, understanding and carefully choosing colors is important. When it comes to choosing colors for your business, I would take note of your audience and where your business will be selling its products or services. I would then choose colors based on what cultural associations that audience has with the colors you’re interested in using and how they relate to how you want your business’s values and reputation to be perceived.

* https:// www. livescience.com/276-red-outfits-give-athletes-advantage .html