How to Choose Your Logo Color Palette

When it comes to designing a logo, choosing the right color palette is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Colors communicate values, emotions, and personalities, strongly shopping how your brand is perceived by others. 

Your logo’s color scheme will strongly dictate how your brand is perceived. Emotions, messages, and decisions are influenced by colors. The colors of your logo are connected with your brand’s image and address your audience’s needs. 

In this article, we’ll dive deeper into learning more on how you can choose your logo color palette. 

The importance of logo colors 

Colors play a strong psychological role in shaping perceptions. 85% of buyers claim that colors are a main factor in choosing one product over the other. When choosing your logo colors, it’s always important to notice something:

1. Emotions: Your logo should communicate different emotional responses. For example: blue evokes trust and professionalism, while yellow promotes energy and optimism. 
2. Improves recognition: A consistent color scheme makes your brand instantly recognizable. For example, take a look at Facebook’s blue and Coca-Cola’s red. 
3. Reflects your brand’s identity: Your color choices should align with your brand’s vision, mission, and personality. 

When you carefully choose your logo’s colors, you can easily create a strong visual identity that will leave a good first impression. Always remember that you only have one to make a good first impression so carefully consider this. 

1. Deeply understand your brand’s identity 

Your brand’s personality, goals, and values need to always be defined before choosing any colors. Primary questions to answer include: 

1. Would you describe your brand as professional or playful? 
2. How would you characterize your brand? 
3. Who is your target audience? 

For example, if you look at a luxury logo design, it automatically gives people a premium feeling and attracts high-paying customers. Every logo design represents something and gives people some type of emotion. 

2. Learn about the basics of color psychology 

Color psychology explores how colors affect human behavior and emotions. Understanding the basics of color psychology helps you make much more informed decisions: 

1. Red: Represents passion, energy, and urgency. It’s most commonly used for expensive luxury ads and promotions. For example, Coca-Cola and YouTube use the color red in their logo. 
2. Yellow and orange: Associated with creativity and positively influences how people perceive your colors. Otherwise, both these colors represent happiness, optimism, creativity, and warmth. A good example includes McDonalds. 
3. Purple: Purple represents royalty and is an elegant color. Best to use when you are selling some luxury high-end product. 
4. Blue: Used by social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, which promotes a calm feeling and connectivity. 
5. Black and white: Usually used for brands that promote luxury and high-end products. For instance, Apple is a great example to use. 

Each color represents something unique, but it’ll all depend on what your brand’s identity represents. After you clarify the first step, you’ll be able to know which colors belong to your logo. 

3. Analyze your competitors

Research your industry and competitors. There are three different types of competitors you should be aware of: 

1. Direct competitors: Businesses offering the same product or service to the same target audience. For example: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi. 
2. Indirect competitors: Companies offering alternative solutions to the same problem the customer is going through. For example: Streaming platforms vs movie theaters. 
3. Emerging competitors: New market entrants or startups with lots of potential. 

While you now know how to analyze your competitors, it’s time to find out how you can identify them. Competitors can be identified by conducting online searches by using keywords related to your industry to find competing brands and acquiring customer feedback by analyzing surveys and reviews. 

As a final approach, it’s important to also analyze your competitor’s branding and marketing practices. A brand’s identity is all in the logo and visual design which visually presents a brand, and the tone and messaging which shows which emotions or values they emphasize. 

Last but not least, you need to identify which platforms they are most active on? What type of content are they producing? Are they running paid ads? What are they focused on? 

4. Choose a primary color

Your primary color is the anchor of your logo’s palette. It’s the color associated with your brand and reflects its identity. Start by defining your brand’s personality and core values. We already mentioned the primary colors in color psychology and what each of them represent, so it’s important to define your brand’s identity in order to make the right choice. 

When choosing your color, it’s important to test color versatility across different mediums and formats. This includes promoting consistency in digital and print, testing how your color pairs with other elements like text and background, and making sure your logo remains recognizable in black and white. 

Above all, it’s important to choose a color that can pair with secondary and accent colors. Analogous colors are next to each other on the color wheel, and complementary colors are opposite to each other on the color wheel. 

5. Limit your choices when it comes to choosing your color palette 

A well-designed color palette enhances your brand’s visual identity and makes sure your brand’s logo is consistent and communicates a professional appearance across platforms. Limiting your color palette allows you to carefully choose colors to maintain simplicity, versatility, and cohesion. Here’s a few practices to follow: 

1. Understand each color’s role: The main color representing your brand, which is used most frequently in logos and key elements. 
2. Secondary colors: Complementary colors that enhance and support the primary color. 
3. Accent colors: Used for highlights or emphasis, such as calls to action or buttons. 

The ideal color palette size to follow goes like this: 

1. Primary color: 1
2. Secondary colors: 2-3 
3. Accent colors: 1-2 

Limiting your color palette is a great move that ensures an impactful and cohesive presence. 

6. Test your color palette out for versatility 

Once you’ve chosen your colors, it’s time to test your palette in different scenarios. For example, let’s take a look at where and how you can test your color palette: 

1. Digital applications: Clarify how the logo looks on your website, social media, and mobile devices? 
2. Print materials: Make sure that the colors translate well into packaging, business cards, and merchandise. 
3. Backgrounds: Test the logo on different background colors to ensure versatility. This will help you know if your logo colors will remain the same across different mediums. 

It’s important to always make the adjustments required to optimize your palette for all users. 

7. Pay attention to readability and contrast 

It’s important that your logo is readable across various mediums and sizes. High contrast between logo colors and background promotes readability. In order to do so, it’s important that you use high contrast combinations between text and background colors. For instance, you can use dark text on a light background, that usually works best. 

Afterwards, it’s important to consider users with color blindness. Studies show that more than 350 million people worldwide are color blind. Therefore, use patterns, textures, or labels in addition to colors to communicate this information. This helps users with color blindness. After you do that, you need to test your palette with simulators for common types of color blindness. 

Overall, your best bet is to limit primary and secondary colors to avoid overwhelming your design and promoting consistency across all UI elements. Review your palette both in dim and bright lighting to promote legibility and visibility. 

As an alternative method, you can also use bold or larger fonts for low-contrast colors, but ensure it complements the overall design. 

8. Gather feedback 

Before you finalize your logo colors, gather feedback from stakeholders, your team members, and even customers if you have to. You may be wondering how you can do so? Well, it’s important to answer three important questions: 

1.  What emotions do this logo evoke? 
2. Does the color scheme you chose align with your brand’s identity? 
3. Is this logo memorable and visually appealing? 

Feedback can significantly help in fine-tuning your design for maximum impact. 

Choosing the right colors is a strategic decision that goes beyond aesthetics

Choosing the right colors for your logo is a strategic decision that goes beyond aesthetics. By deeply understanding your audience, brand’s identity, and the psychological effects of colors, you can create a logo that communicates your values and leaves a lasting first impression. 

Therefore, don’t rush and take time to experiment, test, and refine your palate to make sure it aligns with your vision and resonates with your target audience. 

Remember, your logo colors are the backbone of your brand’s identity so it’s important that you choose the logo colors that represent your brand’s identity, and it’s important to choose wisely when doing so.