How to choose a colour palette for a brand
A good palette isn't one that 'looks nice' on a colour wheel — it's one that distinguishes you from competitors and reads consistently on screen, on signage and in a messenger app.
Start from the market, not personal taste
Gather ten direct competitors' logos on one screen. In most niches, half of them will use one or two similar colours — blue for financial services, green for eco-friendly products, red for food delivery.
Using the same colour as everyone else reduces brand distinctiveness, even if that colour objectively suits the niche. A deliberate shift away is a working technique worth applying before the logo is approved, not after.
How many colours you actually need
One primary colour, one accent, and two or three neutral shades for text and backgrounds is enough. The primary carries recognition and covers most of the surface; the accent is reserved for buttons and key elements — which is exactly why it must stay rare.
A palette of seven 'brand' colours in practice means none of them work as an identifying signal — the eye can't fix on which colour belongs to the brand when there are too many.
Technical requirements you can't skip
Text-to-background contrast must meet the minimum readability ratio — anything below it becomes illegible on a phone in sunlight, even if it looks fine on the designer's monitor.
Fix exact colour values in two systems: for screen and for print. A saturated blue on a monitor and the same blue in CMYK print are not identical colours, and without fixed values every print shop will pick its own shade.
Testing on real media
Look at the palette not in a full-screen mockup but in real conditions: an avatar a few dozen pixels wide, a messenger's dark mode, signage in daylight and under evening lighting.
A colour that 'disappears' in one of those scenarios — a light accent lost on a white app background, for instance — needs either rework or restriction to contexts where it genuinely works.
Colour psychology without overpromising
Claims like 'yellow stimulates appetite, blue builds trust' oversimplify something that actually depends on context, culture and the specific shade. The same green reads differently in national symbolism than in a Western fintech identity.
It's more practical to rely on testable criteria: distinctiveness from competitors, legibility at small size, stability in print. These can be tested, unlike claims about how a shade influences a purchase decision.