Logo Design & Color Theory: Picking the Perfect Hues

Choosing the right logo design color for your business isn't an easy task. A logo is the first impression someone will have of your business, and it can significantly impact how people feel about your brand.

Color psychology is the study of hues and their influence on human behavior. It's a key player in deciding on your logo's colors, and it can help you create a logo that resonates with your target audience.

Logos Impact Brands in a Big Way

Logos are the visual embodiment of your brand's personality and values. They should be instantly recognizable by your customers and convey the essence of your brand without saying a word.

• Simplicity is key to a memorable logo design.
• Choosing the right colors can make or break your logo design.
• Using color effectively is crucial to creating a powerful logo design.

How a Logo Color Influences Perception of Your Brand

Logo design is an exercise in imagination. There's no one-size-fits-all solution that will work for every business. One shade of color may work for one brand, while another business in the same industry might find a different color more effective.

The Most Common Logo Colors

• Blue: 33%
• Red: 29%
• Black, Grey, Silver: 28%
• Yellow, Gold: 13%

How Most Brands Use Color in Their Logos

Most logos use two colors. Around 95% of brands only use two colors in their logo, and only 5% use three or more.

Examples of Famous Brand Color Combinations:

• Facebook: blue and white
• Ikea: blue and yellow
• Colgate: red and white
• FedEx: purple and orange
• Starbucks: green and white
• McDonald's: yellow and red
• Coca-Cola: red and white
• Foundr: black, red, and white

Each Color Has Its Drawbacks

Every color has positive and negative connotations. Remember that logo design is art, and art is subjective. Some people may find blue soothing, while others might find it terrifying.

You'll never be able to choose a color that is universally adored. It's all subjective. What matters is that your logo resonates with your audience. Spend time testing your logo to ensure it resonates with your target customers.

Your Guide to Logo Color Meanings

To find the right color palette for your brand logo, you need to know what it means. Let's walk through each color so you can understand the color psychology of each hue. This list includes the colors most commonly used in brand logos to help you narrow down which colors evoke which emotions and associations.

White Logos

White is often associated with cleanliness, peace, hygiene, simplicity, and sincerity. However, the meaning of this color can change radically based on cultural values.

• In some areas of the world, white is associated with weddings.
• In other areas, white is associated with burials and mourning.

White is also frequently used as a contrasting color, either to create negative space in a logo or to compliment the other surrounding colors.

Silver Logos

Silver is the color of sleekness, wealth, grace, and elegance. When used as a color in a logo, silver acts as a great descriptor of everything high-end, industrial, and technology-related.

• Many jewelry brands used to have silver in their logos, but it has become a little dated as the color became more associated with industrial metals rather than fine metals.
• Silver is often used by video game brands to suggest weaponry and war.

Yellow/Gold Logos

Yellow usually evokes feelings of optimism, confidence, self-esteem, happiness, and encouragement. It suggests sunshine, summer, and can even evoke feelings of wealth and money.

• Yellow can also suggest a bargain, something on sale, or even cheap products.
• It's also associated with caution, like with hazard signs and traffic lights.

Orange Logos

Orange is a cheerful, friendly, and enthusiastic color. Orange tends to stir up a little controversy when it comes to logo design.

• Orange can be a little harsh on the eye if not balanced with a nice neutral color.
• It's often used by brands that are looking to promote themselves as fresh, exciting, and friendly companies.
• In many Asian countries, orange is a color that triggers associations with religion (especially Buddhism and Hinduism).

Red Logos

Red is universally considered to be representative of romance. It can represent energy, passion, love, power, and seduction.

• Red can also suggest war, conflict, anger, and stress.
• Red is often paired with white, black, or other neutral shades for brands that are high-energy and powerful.
• Lots of restaurants and food brands use red, including the most iconic color-combo by Coca-Cola, and is often used in sports (FC Bayern, FC Liverpool, Arizona Cardinals, Chicago Bulls), food, transport, and retail.

Pink Logos

Pink logos connotate hope and inspiration. This secondary color is associated with calm, reassurance, and comfort.

• Pink is often associated with childhood or a dreamy, fantasy side of life.
• In recent years, we've seen an enormous uptick in the use of pink within logos and company branding, specifically in a shade that has come to be known as “millennial pink.”
• As a logo color, pink doesn’t pop up that much, but when it does you can see that it’s often for baby brands, desserts, and toys.

Green Logos

Green is the easiest color on human eyes, and it’s the color our eyes are most sensitive to.

• Green is an international color of relaxation, nature, and peace.
• Green has evolved to be universally associated with the environment and environment-friendly products.
• Vegetarianism, veganism, and eco-friendly brands use green to signify their values.

Blue Logos

Blue is the most popular color for marketers and brands the world over. It’s a color of calm, control, logic, honesty, intelligence, security, purity, freedom, and confidence.

• Blue is an obvious and safe choice for finance, IT, equipment, healthcare, energy, and transport industries.
• Its positive connotations work perfectly to create a strong image for such companies.
• In the wrong context, this primary color can look a little cold and unfriendly.

Violet/Purple Logos

Violet or purple is a traditional color of royalty, luxury, and spirituality.

• It triggers associations with creativity, extravagance, fantasy, sophistication, mystery, calm, luxury, high quality, and independence.
• Purple is often used by brands that are looking to promote themselves as creative, innovative, and luxurious.
• Think of Yahoo, Taco Bell, Twitch, Wonka, Viber, Benq.

Brown Logos

As the color of earth and wood, brown embodies everything practical, stable, down-to-earth, conservative, and reliable.

• Brown is often used by brands that are looking to promote themselves as natural, trustworthy, and reliable.
• Brown is good for agriculture, food, transport, and family products.
• UPS is probably the most well-known brown-based logo.

Grey Logos

Grey is one of the most interesting colors for creating a brand identity. It is associated with professionalism, conservatism, dignity, classics, stability, modesty.

• Grey in your logo makes a startup look serious, professional, and credible.
• Different shades of grey are traditionally used for finance, equipment, transport, and IT.
• It subtly illuminates the bright, light shades in the logo and calms down the stronger, darker colors.

Black Logos

Black is the symbol of efficiency and sophistication, prestige and power, elegance and luxury, control and protection, mystery and seduction.

• Black is great for emphasizing the luxurious side of your brand and making products look more expensive.
• Black is often used by brands that are looking to promote themselves as powerful, sophisticated, and luxurious.
• Black is a traditional color of grief and mourning in most countries of Europe, North America, and Africa.

Choosing Your Logo Color

Now it's time to decide on which color you want to use for your brand.

Logo Colors for Industries

How a logo color is interpreted often varies depending on the industry.

• Start with a plain black-and-white logo and then work with one color at a time to see what works.
• If it's not working, you can add color.

The Color Wheel

If you have one color you like for your logo, play around with a complementary color to really bring it to life.

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are those that enhance (or complement) each other.

• Green boosts red, orange boosts blue, and even purple and green work in harmony to bring out the best in each other.

Analogous Colors

An analogous color scheme involves combining three neighboring colors.

• Analog color schemes are less invasive than complementary schemes, but they do run the risk of being a little bland.

Triadic Logos

Triadic logos consist of three colors from different points in the color wheel that make up a triangle shape.

• These logos are a bit more tricky to pull off because of the variation of colors.

Monochromatic Logos

Using different hues of the same color is referred to as being “monochromatic”.

• Both Paypal and Oreo rock a monochromatic scheme with its navy blue and sky blue duo.

Ensuring Your Logo Color and Branding Hues Are Used Consistently

Once you’ve chosen the logo design that best tells your brand story, the next step is to ensure that your branding is used consistently.

• Each particular color has its own CMYK code and hex code.
• CMYK is most often used in print materials, whereas hex codes are most commonly used in web-based design.
• Ensure that you receive the color codes that will help you maintain brand consistency.

Logo Colors Not to Use

Now that we've identified some of the best-in-class examples, we should also spend a minute identifying some of the logo colors you should avoid.

Pure Black (#000000)

• Pure black is too overpowering and you are much better off using a softened version with your logo design.

Red and Green

• Unless you’re in the business of Christmas crackers, red and green are not your friends unless they’re complimented by a third color.

Bright on bright colors

• The odd bright color can add plenty of value to your logo design, but too many can lead to your logo being confusing and ineligible.

AI Tools to Pick Logo Colors

If you're still stuck choosing a color for your business logo, thankfully, there are AI tools that can speed up the process.

Logo Colors FAQs

How can I use color to make my logo stand out from competitors?

Color can be influential for both good and bad. Bawdy colors can thwart customers, and seamless colors can sway. An easy way to differentiate yourself from the competition is by choosing logo colors(s) untapped by other businesses in your industry.

Can I incorporate my brand's color scheme into my logo design or start from scratch?

If you already have a brand standard of colors and are making a new logo, the logo and color scheme should connect. It's better to start from scratch than have your brand colors look different from your logo.

Should I consider changing my logo's colors periodically to keep up with current design trends?

Chasing trends can be costly. We suggest that you focus on the other aspects of your business than whether your logo colors are trendy. Look at some of the largest corporations in the world, they've spent millions on rebrands of their logos, and now, many of them have reverted to their retro logos and colors because they are cleaner and timeless.

Ready to Get the Wheels Turning on Your New Business Venture?

Are you ready to turn your million-dollar idea into a million-dollar reality, but don’t know where to start? Check out foundr+ for $1 to start generating revenue in no time.

—

This article was updated with support from Graeme Whiles.