How to Choose Your Brand Colors

Hello everyone! In today’s blog post, I’m going to cover how to choose your brand’s color theme. Having a clear, concise color theme is one of the key ways to create a cohesive brand. This is always a hot topic when it comes to Instagram, but I really feel it’s important when it comes to coordinating all aspects of your brand and making sure you’re sending a consistent message to your audience.

Click “play” on the video below, or continue reading this post to learn all about how to choose your brand’s color theme!

If you don’t know what a brand color theme is, here’s a quick definition for you:

Brand Color Theme:

A brand color theme is a few colors that are showcased consistently in your brand’s visuals that work well together to communicate a little bit about your brand to whoever is viewing it. 

Having a set of colors not only helps to identify your brand as YOURS, but it’s also super helpful when it comes to communicating something about your brand without saying a darn thing! (This is very efficient, and if I love one thing, I love efficiency!)

I’m sure you’ve felt this before, but colors evoke emotional responses. Although different colors evoke different responses, each color tends to evoke the same response no matter who you show it to, regardless of age, race, gender, any of that stuff - it’s a HUMAN thing. The study of this is called “color psychology”. When it comes to branding and marketing, we can definitely use this science to our advantage. You can help viewers understand the core message of your brand in a split second, simply by using the correct colors on your website or in your photos.

Let’s go ahead and dive in to the 3 steps to choose your brand’s colors:

Step 1: Brainstorm Descriptive Words

The first step in choosing your brand’s colors is to establish how you want people to describe your brand. Take a moment here and do a little brainstorming, then write down a few descriptive words that you would LOVE to hear people using when they talk about your brand.

Step 2: Find Corresponding Colors

Next, you’ll want to spend some time researching color psychology. Your goal is to figure out which colors correspond to the adjectives that you picked. For example, if you want people to feel joy, you’ll want to research what colors evoke that emotion in viewers. Don’t get too hung up on the research, instinct also plays a super important role in color psychology. Pay attention to what colors you’re naturally drawn to because we often pick the right colors for our brand before even knowing the emotions they represent.

If you want save some serious time on your research, I created a free PDF download summarizing all my own research about color psychology. If you’d like it, you can get instant access to that PDF by letting me know what email address you’d like me to send it to in the form below - it’s as easy as that!

Step 3: Select Your Brand Colors

Next, after you’ve established how you’d like people to describe your brand, and figured out which colors align with those descriptors, all that’s left to do is to actually select your colors! If you’re not sure how many colors to choose, start with selecting two main colors, and one accent color. You can choose more or fewer colors, but that’s a great place to start.

Once you have your colors selected, use them EVERYWHERE! Put them on your website, wear your colors to your next brand photoshoot, feature the colors in your insta stories, product packaging, and even decorate your office with them. Using your colors in all these different ways will quickly tell you clients or customers what your brand is about. You always have the option to adjust your colors as you brand changes and grows, just remember to refer back to color psychology whenever you’re reevaluating your scheme.

I’d love to hear from you!

Leave a comment below letting me know what your color scheme is! And, until my next post, follow me on Instagram @sarahdeshaw and subscribe to my YouTube Channel